London - Into the Tower, and "Down" at the Astoria

Tuesday May 30th would be our last day at the Madison House on Gower Street in London. It was so strange getting packed up and ready for check-out because it really seemed as if we just got there. We arranged with Maggie to leave our bags there for the day, and headed out. We hit up the "Pret A Manger" cafe for some machiatos and breakfast sandwiches and enjoyed them at one of the tables set up out on the sidewalk. Our morning mission was to find the Astoria Theatre and get tickets for the "Down" concert that night. (last night's show was sold out, so they added a second) We stopped into a few ticketing agencies to see if they sold tickets, and they did not, but cheerily gave us directions to the theatre box office at Charing Cross and Tottenham Court Road. The girl behind the ticket window there wasn't blessed with the morning cheeriness we'd encountered elsewhere, but I guess it's consistent with the dark aura of the Astoria anyway. We collected two tickets and tucked them away. The doors would open at 7pm, so we had a full day in London to enjoy in the meantime, and we chose to visit the infamous Tower of London. The weather, although crisp and at times downright chilling, was cooperative, and the sky was a pretty mix of blue and white puffly clounds. After queing for tickets, we walked through the entrance gate and encountered a large group of people being talked to by a chap all dressed up in some kind of uniform, who turned out to be "Allen", and he would be giving us a free guided tour of the grounds for the rest of the afternoon. Allen was absolutely wonderful. He was a real live Beefeater, one of well under a hundred such men in the country. Hysterical, dry, devilishly charasmatic, a wealth of knowledge, with a self-admitted resemblence to Sylvester Stallone. We stayed on the grounds for the rest of the day, touring the white chapel, the white tower, the bloody tower, and of course the Crown Jewels. It was all very well done, and since Vee had recently read the book "The Other Boleyn Girl", she was absolutely captivated by everything. Nearing 5pm, we had to hustle back to the Mad House, get our backs and check in at our new hotel in the Paddington area of the city. Once above ground at the Edgemore stop on the Bakerloo line, Vee successfully navigated us to the hotel, and the friendly Indian hotelier greeted us in his yellow flip-flops, and got us settled into our cigarette smoke-infused itty bitty room with it's stained walls, carpeting, furniture and bedspread. It appeared the sheets were clean though, as well as the towel, and complimentary mini-soap. We inspected the shared toilet, and shared shower, and everything looked to be usable, so we dropped off our bags, and went to the little Boots corner market to refresh our depleted supply of shampoo, conditioner, soap and razors, and quickly returned to the hotel to drop it all off before heading down to the Astoria. Once there, around 7:15pm or so, we went into the theater and saw it would be PERFECT for seeing a concert. We found ourselves on the balcony, and made our way to a little booth type of arrangement that we comandeered for ourselves. From there we had a direct view to the entire stage, the crowd below, and no one could sit behind us, and no one could block our view in front. Before the band came out, they showed a collection of videos from their own silly road-tour archives, and videos from other bands that they obviously considered to be their influences (Queen, Black Sabbath, Lynrd Skynrd, Metallica, Cro-Mags, Slayer, etc.) and finally, with the stage filled up with smoke-machine induced cloud cover, Down came out and rocked the house for a solid two hours. This is a band that only has two CDs, and hasn't put anything new out in years. They are made up of active members from the bands Crowbar, Pantera, and Corrosion of Conformity and it was easy to hear all their influences in the music. There was endless moshing, crowd-surfing, fist banging and devil horns, and after 2 encores, they finally called it a night. Also, they were filming, so hopefully we'll end up on their DVD or music video, whatever it is that they were filming for. After the show, we bought what turned out to be an ENORMOUS portion of fish and chips, which was delicious, and devoured that on the street corner while we watched the interesting crowd of concert goers filter out of the theater. One chap, came around the corner a bit more wobbly-kneed and googly-eyed than most. As I watched him serpentine the sidewalk towards us, he began, ever so casually, spitting up onto himself and the sidewalk, continuing on his way, while continuing to vomit all over himself. I can only guess that somewhere in his every-so-slight consciousness, he must have been thinking that if he acted like nothing was happening, no one would notice. Hilarious! Somehow, we managed to finish our fish and chips. And, with a quick stop into a quickie mart for some water and goodies, we went back to the hotel and crashed.