England and Scotland for fun
Day 3 - Monday, April 25 -
England
Rain rain rain. Then mist. Then
rain. The color of the sky didn't change from 5 a.m. until after
noon.
Perfect weather for The Tower, Francesca assured me,
but I feared my beloved ravens would be keeping under shelter, so I
decided to put off the Tower visit until later in the day if not
tomorrow. I had other errands to run, pennies to smash (I had a
list of London locations from a penny smashing website -- Francesca
wasn't amazingly impressed when she went over the different tube
stations near my inquiries, "This is for the penny smashing, yes?"),
and a need to check out this so-called "London Dungeon" that I'd been
told was actually something OTHER than the Chamber of Horrors in Madame
Toussaud's wax museum exhibit. (Susanni confirmed it was across the
river, and she thought it was more for school children, which just sold
me.)
So I set out in the rain, walking to Sloane Square
tube station and hoping I could find it without getting hit by a car
coming from the opposite direction than I'm naturally inclined to look
when crossing the street. Since it was still rather early in the
morning (a little before ten on a Monday), there were plenty of
neighborhood residents -- well-suited gentlemen on their way to work,
women pushing baby prams with a plastic hood over to protect their
young ones from the rain, other young professionals -- to follow in
hopes of finding the tube station, which worked. Before going in,
I stopped by the post office next door to buy a post card stamp (read get pennies), and the man behind
the glass kindly gave me 20 pennies
in my change -- yea!!! I was most happy (and heavy pocketed).
Next stop, Victoria Station, where I bought my
Wednesday train ticket to Edinburgh, and then got on the wrong subway
train heading to the wrong station -- I was intending to go straight to
this so-called London Dungeon (I needed to go to Leicester Square after
2 o'clock to pick up theater tickets, so there were pockets of time to
be filled), but it was London Bridge station, and I was heading toward
Baker Street Station (where I'd planned to drop by Madame Toussaud's
gift shop and smash some pennies). Killed some major time ticking
through the various stations before I'd realized it, then went ahead
and ran the Mdm Toussaud's errand (GIANT line of tourists and students
waiting to get in, but I just needed to duck into the gift shop --
where their smashing required not the 50p coins I'd accumulated on
Sunday, but pound
coins!). Finally made it to London Bridge Station and right
around the corner, as directed to me by a station worker, the London
Dungeon.
I can't believe it took FOUR trips to London before
I experienced the London Dungeon.
The entrance is in a basic black plain building
wall, but with a spooky door with fake oil burning lamps
flickering. At the door, a woman in Victorian dress -- and
blackened eyes and creepy cuts against her ghost white skin -- stared
at me and nodded when I asked if this is where I got tickets. So
I went in, and immediately it's the world's best spook house entrance
-- very dimly lit, dank and smelly, bony graveyard with skeletons
half-buried in the black soil, and semi-glowing bats hanging from the
ceiling, and spooky monk chanting and tolling bells playing over and
over. There were only about 15 people in line (everybody asking
everybody else "Do you have your tickets yet?"), and over and over as
another spooky but more cheerful woman at the front of the line
escorted small groups of people away, we heard her happily tell them
(in an outrageous French accent) to scream real loud, which they all
did (she screaming with them every time) and a flash bulb light went
off. (Clearly a photo purchasing opportunity for the end of the
event.) The closer I got, I heard her asking "Which one iz zee
killah?" and I felt kinda sad because I was alone, and I didn't want to
be the killer, nor thrown in with another group. So it was my
turn, and I sadly said I was the only one, and she brightened up and
said all excited in her outrageous French accent, "You are ze only
one???" and ran to the front door, excitedly chattering in outrageous
French to the first spooky woman about me being seulement, and they were very happy
and she enthusiastically said, "We love it when people come alone!" and
the first spooky woman said she'd get to be ze killer! So they
took me into the next room, where there was an open stockade, and I
hung my hands and head on it and made a scared face while the first
spooky woman swung the battle ax. I felt sure I would be
purchasing that photo at any cost, if not for my Christmas cards this
year.
The next stage was purchasing the ticket and their
"It's a bloody guide!" program, and the nice spooky looking ticket guy
pleasantly said, "Thank you and have a horrible time." Then,
right around the corner, was the penny smasher! And, of course,
it, too, took pound coins, so I had to go back to the spooky cashier
window and ask if I could trade some 50p coins for some pound coins,
and they kindly obliged. Yea!!!
Then there was the exhibit, which was just a
riot. It wound up taking over an hour -- and with the gruesome
displays, stale and bad smelling air, and general walking and standing
and waiting kinda felt like it -- but was well worth it.
Different players took us through different sections of horrible time
in English history: the plague (there was a sign that said "Rats this
way!" and it pointed to a glassed area full of live rats), instruments
of torture (with a creepy demonstration), really unfair trials that
resulted in death (hilarious demonstrations), Jack the Ripper (as told
to us by a fellow working girl of the time, with a bloody model on the
floor for demonstration), and the great fire, all with their own bit of
fun (extremely dramatic to the point of comedy). There was an
amazing labyrinth of mirrors, which I've never experienced -- it was a
dark room of columns, and between them was either a mirror or a clear
space to walk, that seemed to just go in weaves and circles of a huge
room -- and I said I've absolutely got to have one of those in my
house. After the adorable-but-crazy childish-voiced woman lured
us out of the mirror labyrinth and told us not to catch the plague from
people and then sneezed, we continued on through a dark hallway display
that had a mechanized dummy going "A-choo" and spraying a fine mist on
everybody (really funny). There was even a boat ride (like the
Okefenokee Swamp ride at Six Flags) as if we were prisoners being taken
by boat through the River Thames at night to the Tower -- ending with a
WHOOSH of air over our heads as if we were being decapitated.
Eventually, it was over, and it was time to pick up
our pictures (totally bought mine) and hit the gift shop -- TWO MORE
penny smashers, although one was jammed -- and picked up a bottle of
Blood Bath & Shower Gel, and a can of chocolate slugs (because I'm
running out of those).
By then it was all ready 2 o'clock, so I jumped back
on the tube and tore over to Leicester Square for stage tickets for
tonight or tomorrow night, whichever worked best. Francesca said
she was game for anything (except Chicago,
because she'd seen that twice, and not really Chitty Chitty Bang Bang -- she's
too dignified for her own good, that girl), and I was really only
interested in getting something good or not going at all -- I was
thinking either Ewan McGregor in Guys
& Dolls, Mamma Mia!,
or that play Ralph Fiennes was in. I went to the ticket places in
Leicester Square because I was thinking that's where return tickets
were available for purchase on same day, and we might have a shot at
getting tickets for popular shows. (I was wrong - return tickets
are only available at the theater.) ANYWAY, my first choice had
been Ewan and Guys & Dolls,
but I was starting to get sold on Mamma
Mia!, because I was hearing more and more good things about it,
how it was just a lot of fun. (The posters didn't do anything for me,
because it looked like another My
Big Fat Greek Wedding with an Italian theme.) Long story
short, Guys & Dolls
doesn't open until next month (I'd been reading about rehearsals or
previews, I guess), Ralph's play was totally booked, and yes, there
were good seats to Mamma Mia!,
so I got us a pair.
THEN OFF TO THE TOWER!
The sun was peeking out when I left the dungeon, but
it was clouding over again. Still, I figured if it wasn't
actually raining, the ravens would probably be hopping around.
They weren't. I couldn't even find them --
just pigeons and crows. The staff assured me the ravens were
there ("London would fall if we lost them!" a kindly old lady working
in the Crown Jewels gift shop told me), but they were mostly in their
homey cages on one of the grassy sections. I finally found them,
but they were just sadly sitting in their cages (they're really fun to
watch hopping around the Tower like they own the place, which they do),
except for two that were perched almost on a wall of a building and
staring at it hardly moving, as if they were on strike (or being
punished). A quick peek at the crown jewels, a smashed penny at
the Royal Fusiliers museum (the nice man let me in to smash without
paying the entrance fee) where some Germans were smashing a bunch for
themselves, of course every gift shop I saw (I bought a cool Tower of
London game called OUTRAGE!, a couple of Christmas ornaments, and a
couple of prints), then staggered back to Francesca's, where she was
thrilled to hear we were going to see Mamma
Mia! and we had a quick supper of fish cakes and courgettes (or
zucchini to Americans and Italians).
Then we took the doubledecker bus to Piccadilly
Circus, where the Prince of Wales Theater is, and settled in for the
show, which was awesome. The story is a young woman who lives on
a Greek island with her mother and doesn't know who her father is is
about to get married, and, she tells her friends, she's found her
mother's diary that tells of the THREE possible men who may be her
father and she invited them to the wedding and they ALL said YES!
But the real draw to the show is that it's a musical with all ABBA
songs, cleverly worked into the plot, and it's just a fun party -- the
audience clapping and singing along some times, lots of upbeat songs
and dancing and tunes you know. I just knew they had to work Waterloo into it somehow, because
the musical got its start in London (and Trafalgar Square is down the
street), but they didn't -- and then, during the reprise of songs for
the encore, they shouted out "Who wants to hear ONE MORE SONG?" and
then they did Waterloo, and,
of course, the English audience was rocking ("My oh my, at Waterloo
Napoleon did surrender! Oh, yes! --").
Tuesday, odds and ends around town... who knows...
England and
Scotland for fun
Travel Journals
The
Marilyn Website home
Copyright Marilyn Estes
1997-infinity