At Least Nobody Shits in the Pools at the Tower of London

I have finally sat myself down to write about my adventures last weekend. I have armed myself with a bag of cheese savouries, so the task of riffling through my memories to remember where I went only a few days ago seems less daunting.

Friday marked a group field trip to the Tower of London and Borough Market. Our tour at the Tower sufficiently stocked my squeamish quota for the rest of the day. I could have heard about just one disembowelment and/or beheading and that would have been fine, but instead I got to hear probably half a dozen tales of heads being hung on London Bridge after their owners had finally been beheaded. Sweet dreams!

I couldn't help but think about Water Country, my place of summer employ, while we were walking through the Tower of London. Certainly there is more value in a castle, parts of which that date back to the eleventh century, than there is in a small New England amusement park from the eighties, but it was a connection I couldn't not see. (Thankfully, I didn't see any ass crack though, which is not a guarantee at Water Country.) In any case, as our tour guide Steve led us into the chapel for the end of the tour, I found myself wondering how someone got themselves a job as a tour guide at the Tower. Also, didn't it get boring as fuck?

Apparently not. Once in the chapel, in the FAQs portion of the tour, Steve told us about how august his position was. Apparently it takes years of military service, achieving a certain rank, and then a fairly competitive application process. Perhaps it's the years of Water Country speaking - or a misunderstanding of the prestige of working at one of the world's foremost tourist attractions - but it doesn't seem worth it.

That said, beyond the slight Disney-esque feel of the tour, the history of the place itself is astounding. The highlight for me was seeing the room in which the Duke of Clarence, of Richard III fame, was likely killed in. We also went to see the crown jewels, and holy shit that is some ridiculously fancy ass headgear. Royalty must've had ridiculous neck muscles. Yet another reason I don't want to be a princess/queen.

After the Tower of London, we headed across Tower Bridge to Borough Market which has a lot of produce, cheese, and the odd stall of exotic meats.

I did not buy any kangaroo burgers. As a rule, I don't eat animals that have bifurcated penises. Sorry, wombats, that means you're out, too.

After not getting enough of London market life on Friday, some friends and I set out to find one on Portobello Road on Saturday. Portobello Road is apparently one of the unmissable things to do in London, so when we ended up on two shorts streets with people selling laptops from the late nineties and hairdryers with broken cords, we were unimpressed. Cold and disappointed we set off back towards our flats. We had almost reached the tube station when I saw a large tent down a side street. Hoping we had actually found the market now, my friends and I set off again and this time actually found the market which sprawled across several street and down the road.

In other news, despite my inability to find Portobello Road, last week I was asked for directions to the British Museum, which I was able to successfully deliver. Admittedly, we were only a couple hundred feet from the museum at that point, but I'll take whatever reassurances I can get.