MacKat in Ireland

Beheadings work better when the executioner is sober. No, we didn’t see any live beheadings, but we heard about lots of them on our tour of the Tower of London. The Tower is currently most famous for being the storage area for the Crown Jewels, but it’s got a lot more history than that. It was initially a big tower where the monarch lived and occasionally kept prisoners. Over time the monarchs became more paranoid and added more walls, more towers, and a moat. Since then all the waste that had built up in the moat over the previous 300 years was cleaned out, a few buildings were rebuilt, and it was opened to tourists.

Our tour guide was not only very knowledgeable (there were a lot of dates to remember), but she had a really cool Scottish accent. We saw Anne Boleyn’s grave, an axe that used to remove heads from bodies, and lots of royal chainmail – some with extremely augmented codpieces.

We saw the Crown Jewels – crowns, scepters, orbs, etc. – and lots of punch bowls made of gold. Let it be known that if you’d like to offer a gift to the English monarch it needs to be enormous, gaudy, and made of precious metals/stones.

We’ve also got some pictures of Tower Bridge below (the one that goes up and down).

Tuesday night we had decided to see the fancier side of London around Picadilly circus and the West End.  To be honest, Picadilly Circus isn’t too impressive – it pales in comparison to Times Square in Manhattan.  A few blocks to the east, though, lies Leicester Square where the red carpet is rolled out for London movie premieres.  We spent a few seconds pretending there were famous people out and about before we made our way to Planet Hollywood to eat.

Since space isn’t cheap in the West End this Planet Hollywood was a bit small but had some great film artifacts.  In the pictures below you’ll see Hook’s hook, Jack’s axe, and McClain’s badge, all of which were near us at our table.  To be honest, I don’t remember what the food was like; I was busy staring at a Gremlin.

Our dinner deal also included tickets to the musical Avenue Q, which I didn’t get to see in Ames last April because of finals.  This isn’t your momma’s musical.  Avenue Q includes such soon-to-be classics as Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist, What Do You Do with a B.A. in English?, and The Internet is for Porn.  I thought it was much better than more mainstream musicals like Wicked (which is really boring).  And, the Chinese-guy-who-lives-in-Vancouver that sat next to me gave me some insight into what’s worth seeing in Berlin next month.  All in all, it was a good night.