Saturday, March 26, 2011

Churches and Wenches

Hello There!

Been wanting to catch up with you...sorry about the wait...apparently being half a world away doesn't do much for my procrastination problems.  Technically I should be telling you about my first two days of travel, since I am one day late and half a day ahead, but lets break it up shall we? That way you can check your emails, maybe get a coffee between blogs.

So first day...well it was more like first day and a half, because at least 12 hours of it were spent in a plane.
Quite the Behemoth actually, a Boeing 777-200.  Like 300 seats.
So you're thinking, the bigger the beast, the more stable right? Should be an easy flight...

Uh huh.

I enjoyed that flight about as much as Indiana Jones enjoys riding a camel.  Sure the view may be nice and you'll get there on time, but eventually the other qualities of the camel will kick in.  It was a very noisy, smelly, and bumpy ride...but the view was nice. And I watched True Grit.  Damn good flick.
Get off the Air Port. Have no Frelling idea where I am.  Find Jessica, my awesome host who a lot of you know(she says hi.)
Sorry. She's shy.

Took my first real subway ride. And was like HOLY HELL HOLY HELL THIS THING IS FAST HOLY HELL WHO ARE YOU RUBBING UP AGAINST ME I NEED AN ADULT.
After all this I waste half a day getting to London and only get to explore like two blocks.

Good thing they were like the coolest two blocks I've seen in my life..
We stayed at Club St. Paul's.  Because right outside...is St. Paul's cathedral. Plus our room is really decent...kinda dorm roomish.
The cathedral took up two hours of our afternoon.  They wouldn't let us take pictures, but I'm okay with that.  I may have left a permanent groove in the floor with my jaw.

So here's a picture of a queen with some pigeons on her head...


After purifying our minds and souls with incense and history, we strolled down to undo the damage with a good old fashioned medieval night out.  And saw some sights on the way...

The Tower of London(stay tuned for more about this later!)
And the Tower Bridge...then we took some wrong turns, I got almost run over my a mob like fifteen times and we ended up at our destination...The Medieval Times Banquet. It's the full title, that's why i capitalized so much...

We actually showed up like an hour early and no one was there so we kinda thought that'd we'd been had for a bit...and we still weren't really sure where we were so that was fun.  Soon enough though we were brought down stairs below the street into a fine cellar filled with wenches and knights for both sexes to appreciate.  We were offered costumes, some polish wench tried to put a dress on me(didn't match my eyes) but we opted out and found our seats for the evening's entertainment.


Upon seating we met a lovely couple of Aussies who shared the night with us.  The young girl had apparently just had her 12th birthday at the Moulin Rouge...


Then the party got started.  Between varied courses of soup, bread, meat, potatoes and such we were entertained by acrobatics, dancing, singing and even some PG bloodletting via dull swords and card-trick touting knights...check out my album on Picasa for many more pictures...


Sorry ladies, my camera was much more interested in the scantily clad women then the other parts of the evening.  Alpha's kinda a pig like that...

After much fun and libation was had by all, some lady gagaing was done in 14th century wear. And there was much rejoicing.  Even the jesters had more rhythm than I.

So that was our first day.  Our second would bring adventure, history, malfunctioning train-tickets and even some revoloutions. (w/smoke-bombs!!)

Thanks for reading...check out my photos...

https://picasaweb.google.com/BBrowitt

Stay tuned...

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Brian Browitt! I must say, I have LOVED reading about your excursions thus far. Also, I must add that your writing style has come leaps and bounds and has so much of YOU in it! Kudos! Can't wait to read more, and I hope I can figure out how to follow this and not forget (blogging is out of my realm of experience). Say hi to Jess for me!

***I should start a blog...thoughts?

Miss you!

Unknown said...

You make us smile! It's a race to see who gets to the computer first to read your latest news. What a treat and thanks for doing this. While we miss you tons, this really does make us still feel connected!

Sherwood said...

A subway, huh? I've never even seen one in person before. Though I was in a cab twice (during the same trip)... That was exotic for little ol' me.

Pigeons is exactly what should be on a queen's head. Duh. Why is this such an odd thing that requires being captured on film?

The Medieval Times Banquet sounds like a wonderful place. Did you just happen across it or was there a plan to go there? I've been to a Renaissance Faire twice (though it's been a looong time) and it sounds like this place could be a classy version of what Faires should be. In fact, I just finished polishing up all the leather goodies I bought for my excursions but never wear anymore... Somehow all that went together. If it doesn't seem like it, be imaginative.

I've never really been in a church (outside some dinky place in a strip mall that I took a tent stake into) and have no particular interest in such, but the great cathedrals of Europe are definitely places I'd want to go. It just blows my mind that I could be standing inside a building that's been around multiple times longer than our country.