an epic day of London Tourism

So as the entire WORLD has heard, there's this little volcano in Iceland that nobody can pronounce...and that little volcano decided to be awful and erupt at the most inopportune possible time.  As a direct result of Mr. Icelandic Volcano, all UK airspace has been shut down since Thursday...17,000 flights in, around, and to/from Europe have been disrupted so far...and I missed my weekend trip to Austria to go see one of my bffs, Phil.  I know that was such a minor disruption compared to other people's situations but I was super bummed.  To make up for the disappointment of missing a weekend in the Alps and all the fun that would have entailed, Coleen, Isaac and I went epic London-touristing yesterday.

We started off at Portobello Road Market again because it was possibly the nicest day we've had yet in London...the high temp was 66 for the day and the buckets of sunshine pouring over London actually made me a little bit tanned.  All my freckles popped out again for the summer, which is always fun.  Nicolle, who joined us for the market, had never been and she and Isaac had a great first time.  Coleen and I in the meantime knew exactly where and what we wanted to hit up...vintage, antiques, jewelry, and the clothes.  Then we stopped for a crepe at one of the Portobello Crepe stands (mmm) and met up with Isaac to continue to the next leg of our day: the Tower of London!

The Tower of London is a hugely multi-faceted complex: royal palace, prison, treasure repository, history museum, and barracks for the Yeoman Warders, the guardians and tour guides of the Tower.  I LOVE the Tower of London.  When I was in London senior year of HS, it was one of my favorite parts of the trip because I am just such a nerd.  With architecture dating back as far as 1080, the Tower has played host to some of the most dramatic moments and dastardly prisoners in English history.  The princes in the tower?  That was there.  Henry VIII's wives' executions?  The Tower.  Guy Fawkes?  Tower.  Sir Walter Raleigh?  Tower.  Every public execution from the 1400s-1700s (and there were a LOT)?...that's right.  The Tower of London hosted them all.  I am such a super-geek that I knew all the stories almost as well as our awesome tour guide.

If you ever do go to the Tower of London, take the Yeoman Warder Tour! It's free with the price of admission and these guys are seriously amazing.  To be a Yeoman Warder you have to serve at least 20 years of distinguished military service in Her Majesty's Army and receive certain accolades and awards for bravery and courage and exemplary performance of duty.  The Yeoman Warders are hilariously funny, incredibly knowledgeable and incredibly historic.  Our tour was so much fun.

We spent our time at the Tower learning about its history from our Yeoman Warder, then went to see the Crown Jewels.  Wow.  Holy BLING is all I can say.  Even though I had seen them before, it never fails to blow your mind.  We read all about the different jewels, then went around looking at them three separate times on the moving walkway.  Yup.  After the Crown Jewels we explored the White Tower, home of the 5-century collection of royal armor, and the tower in which the two princes' bones were uncovered.  Rumor has it that they still haunt the tower and you can hear their laughter sometimes...so of course the Tower tourism people played that up and piped a track of children laughing into the area where you can see the bones were hidden.  I jumped about a MILE when it first played, no joke.  The Royal Armor was really cool but I got bored after a while...there's only so much you can say about how fat Henry VIII was and how hard it was to make him good armor because of it.  So we went to the Bloody Tower, overlooking Traitor's Gate, and saw where Sir Walter Raleigh lived in his time imprisoned in the Tower.  Pretty cool stuff.

After the Tower of London, we headed over to Kensington for Mass at the Brompton Oratory, one of the biggest and most beautiful Catholic churches in London.  I really enjoyed the environment of the church but the homily really rubbed me the wrong way as it was more of a political adjunction (Vote for people who will restrict gay rights and make it impossible to get an abortion!) than an illumination of the significance of any of the readings...and the Gospel today was one of my favorites, about Jesus filling Peter's fishing nets after the Resurrection.  So I was a bit disappointed but the church was still absolutely beautiful.  My awesome dad (who had hurt feelings because I don't talk enough about him here!) made a comment last night about how it sounded like I am really loving the church-going here...and that's very true.  I've been spoiled for beautiful churches, choirs, and Masses, and I really love it over here in that sense.  It's unbelievable to see how their religion has inspired so many people to make such incredible monuments to faith and worship.  Not to mention it's way more fun to attend Mass in a beautiful and historic church than some dull modernist hole (cough All Saints cough).

Mass was ended and we went in peace to love and serve the Lord...and fill our stomachs.  Kate (of SB2010 fame) had made some AMAZING Mexican food for dinner...homemade guacamole, fajitas, and tequila sunrises, with the English interpretation of flan for dessert.  Oh my gosh.  Yumness to the nth degree.  Tequila sunrise may be my new favorite chick drink.  After gorging ourselves, everybody else was ready to head out but I was ready to drop dead...especially as I have two papers to write today.  I went back to my flat, talked to my parents for a LONG time (love you both!) and went to bed nice and early.  I still can't wait for my home mattress though...ahhh anticipatory thoughts.

Long blog short:  Iceland, you suck.  England, you make up for it.  Mexico, your food is great.  Austria, it would've been real.  America, see you in 20 days...if Iceland stops sucking.