LondonTown Day Four: In which I run out of time, money, energy, and patience…

Thought you might like to see the flat. There are two bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining area and living room, a bathroom AND a loo (what?). It’s just the right size for me, though if all the sleeping spaces were being used it would be a very tight fit.

Today it’s off to the Tower with me!
I took quite a lot of pictures here, but I’ll try to limit them to those of aesthetic or general interest. The Tower of London is probably the most visited tourist site in The City. It’s certainly the most expensive. I didn’t get to the ticket booth until an hour and a half before they were closing, and the clerk was discouraging people from buying the ticket. But in typical Zarou fashion, “Pssht, we can make it.”
What’s so galling about these tourist traps is that after you’ve traveled thousands of miles, figured out the Metro, found the entrance, and paid the $30 bucks to get in (plus $4-6 for the audio tour (I know, but I like to learn!)), you still have to listen to jack-ass Americans saying stupid things the whole time! “Why do these stairs have to be so narrow?” “Where’s the real tower, the one where King Arthur lived?” “That Roman city wall would never stop a bunkerbuster.” If I wanted to hear what morons think, I’d have stayed at home and put on Fox News.
But at least I don’t have it as bad as this guy. He has to hear it every day.
Poor little tosser. Can’t be more than seventeen.This is a detail of a tapestry showing Emperor Maximilian and Henry VIII joining forces to defeat the French. Tally-ho! And I thought all my namesake was famous for was getting shot in Mexico!These two fellows are named Gin and Beer. It is believed they guarded William the Conqueror’s liquor cabinet.Oooooh….spooooooky…..
Oh, so I have to tell you this one. Some king (who cares which one? Let's say, Wat VII), he commissions this crown for his coronation. It was the first time the jewels were set in an open setting. Girls? Am I saying that right? Before that there was a little cup you put the jewels in. Here you can see it’s just the outline, so more light bounces around and the whole thing gets more sparkly. And as we all remember from our British History, Sparkliness is power. Anyways so you can see how many holes there are in it. It held something like 200 diamonds. The people were bedazzled. After the coronation, the king couldn’t afford to pay the jewelers, so the diamonds were repo’d. All the monarchy has left is the settings.
On the right and left are two piles of diamonds donated by DeBeers. This is how many diamonds it would have taken.

So in the square, where they executed Anne Boleyn and Charles II, and all kinds of famous people, they're building a new memorial. It won't be a gallows or a chopping block, but rather a glass sculpture of a pillow, with a slight indentation as if someone had been resting their head.

Now that's what I'm talking about. Gestures of repentance, rather than gruesome monuments to violence. Move forward, people.
I caught this Yeoman Warder giving bad directions to the Tower Bridge.

On the audio tour, I learned that the name derives from the Medieval practice of shouting out, “Yo, Man! Whar der ya think yer goin’?” Truthfully, I just made that up. Sorry. It’s just that I’m back in my apartment!!! I don’t want to blog out of sequence but I’m writing this Day 5 at the end of Day 6, which is the travel day. I have been up many hours. I’m just waiting for the laundry to be done and I will sleep for a couple hours and then back to the airport.

But back to the bridge!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I’m too big for Europe. My elbows are all bruised, my head’s as lumpy as a scotch egg gone bad, and I’ve only been able to shower from the neck down.

It's a pretty little town, isn't it?

As the chill came on and the fog rolled in (not really, actually, it's kinda freakin' me out how long the days are here. I feel like Al Pacino in Insomnia. It doesn't even get dark until like 9:30. But imagine the mood...) it was time to gather for this evening's tour of the macabre spots around this part of London what were haunted, by one Jack the Rippah!
But as I mentioned, in the afternoon (7:30!) not that scary.
Not that our guide, Simon, didn't do his best to entertain and educate. Here he is describing the removal of a uterus in full detail. During the rules portion at the beginning of the tour, Simon mentioned that if any one starts harassing us from passing cars or the other side of the street, we should not encourage them, and just ignore them. I thought it was odd that he had to say anything, but sure enough, Friday night and the pubs were jolly. Every group of well-dressed younger men we passed hooted and hollered like houligans.
Don't worry, Micah, I'm sure it's just an archaic spelling. I believe this was the rings and necklaces district.
Mooooo. Not so much the Autumn of Terror as the Crowded Sidewalk Evening.

And then it was home to the blogs. Incidentally, I discovered on my very last night in London that there was a strip club on the same mews as the flat. Kitty-corner, if you will. The Director's Lodge. But I'm glad I didn't know that earlier. Besides, once you've seen Blondie at the Clermont Lounge, you're kinda ruined for strippers forever.

Hey, does anybody remember that the main Fraggle, whatever his name was, had an uncle who would travel around the world of humans and report back on their strange behaviors? Traveling Uncle Matt, I think. Blogger.

And on the plane over to London what I watched was this movie Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story which is a sort of post-modern Being-John-Malkovich-esque movie about the adaptation of this British novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, which is in many ways a post-modern novel (the narrator breaks character and addresses the reader, the biography ends before the protagonist is born, etc.) except that it was written in the 18th century. So then this actor is making a movie about it, only some of the movie IS the movie, and, well, you can see why it appealed to me and the blogging.

Would you please stop saying blog?

Blog.