To be in the very room where Sir Walter Raleigh was confined, to walk the grounds where Anne Boleyn once walked and to see where she was held inside what looks like a rather typical Tudor-style rowhome — it can all be a little overwhelming.

One of the best things about visiting the Tower of London, and you absolutely have to take advantage of this if you ever visit, is the narrated tour done by the Yoeman Warders. These guys are the keepers of the tradition and lore around the Tower, and they put on an incredible performance as they tell visitors all the bloody, grisly details of botched executions, the twists and turns of dastardly plots and the strange customs and codes that governed life inside the walls of the Tower.

Built on the former site of a Roman fort, the Tower isn’t a tower at all. It’s a fort/castle/prison with a moat, nestled on the bank of the Thames in East London. Inside the walls, various structures house the Yoeman Warders and their families, as well as a doctor in residence and a clergyman, who “takes over” (presumably by guiding souls into the afterlife) if and when the doctor is no longer useful.

At the center of the compound is the White Tower, which looks like a castle, and it happens to be where the royal family and his or her court lived and performed their duties. There’s a chapel inside the White Tower, and the basement used to house various torture chambers and weapons caches.

If there’s a single objective for the Tower of London, it’s to project power. The walls are dozens of feet thick, and several drawbridges were used to allow access across a wide and imposing moat. There even used to be a pit filled with lions.

William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy who defeated King Harold at the Battle of Hastings, had the White Tower built inside his London Fortress in 1070. So this place has been around just a few decades short of a millennium. Other notables to have lived in the White Tower include King John (the one from Robin Hood and brother of Richard the Lionheart), Edward I, Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI as well as the notorious Henry VIII.

Perhaps even more fascinating than all the royalty who called the tower home are the people who were imprisoned inside the Tower compound: Sir Thomas More, two of Henry VIII’s wives, Lady Jane Grey, Elizabeth I, Sir Walter Raleigh and plenty of others.

Being inside the walls of the fortress, you can’t help sensing with gratitude what a privilege it is to even be there, but the warders do a great job of making everyone feel welcome, and they have a way of making the stories fun while also paying solemn tribute to the seriousness of all that transpired.

The most popular attraction, judging by the line, is the display of the crown jewels. I couldn’t have been less interested, but I decided to see them anyway. A slow people mover carries visitors past the display cases in an orderly procession of bling-induced, slack-jawed ogling, but I kept my cool and pretended to be thoroughly unimpressed. Which earned me, well, nothing really. I admit the crown jewels are impressive, but I’d much rather look at old stones or faded manuscripts.

I took the tube yesterday from Heathrow to South Kensington where I’m staying. It could not have been easier. Public transit is one area where we just aren’t competitive in the U.S.

After a few minutes spent trying to figure out how the lights work in my room (of course you’d need a room key to keep the lights on in the Loo), I went out to the nearby Victoria & Albert museum. First stop? The cafe of course. I was starving. They had a carrot and tomato soup that was simply incredible. A side of steamed vegetables and some nice roasted potatoes and I was ready to go.

The V&A will blow your mind. Its architectural grandeur makes American museums look like cheap roadside attractions. I was initially disappointed to discover that the textile section was closed. Fortunately, the Ardebil carpet is still on display. Arguably one of the finest rugs in the world, it gets lit for just ten minutes every hour. I walked up just as the lights were coming on. You don’t see many rugs that large, and you really don’t see many rugs of that size with such precision. An unbelievably beautiful work of art.

So Day 1 of my European trip is in the books. Yesterday was strange, mostly because I didn’t manage to sleep on the plane, and I was deliriously tired by the time I got to London. Still, even with the jet lag and the lack of sleep, I’m excited to be here.

I was thinking earlier this morning, in that vaguely conceptual way that can fool you by seeming like it’s deeply philosophical until you begin to actually write it down, about travel. Specifically about how I’m inclined to self-identify as a travel enthusiast or one who cherishes visiting foreign lands. But then I started thinking about it in more concrete terms and realized that I haven’t been outside North America since 1997. Over that time, I’ve been to plenty of domestic destinations, travelled to Mexico a couple times (Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende and Puerto Morales), and I’ve been to Canada as well as the British Virgin Islands. But this European trip is the first time I’ve really travelled since I was a 21-year-old kid in the Army and my unit was deployed to Australia.

So with this being my first time in Europe, I guess it’s understandable that I’d have a difficult time sleeping.

I’ll be here in London for the next few days. On Wednesday, I take a train up to Edinburgh and stay there until Saturday. Then I’ll head back to Berlin to link up with the rest of the students in my MBA program where we’ll begin the more formal part of the trip with site visits to various multinational corporations in and around Berlin before heading to Budapest for a week of the same in that city.

So this week I’m on my own, and while I’d give just about anything to be doing this with my wife instead of solo, I’m going to enjoy the freedom of setting my own schedule and seeing the sights that really interest me. Yesterday’s visit to the Victoria & Albert museum was a good start. Today it’ll be the Tower of London, St. Paul’s and the Tate Modern.

Keep an eye on this space for additional updates.

• Arcade Fire The Suburbs — My expectations for this album were ridiculously high prior to its release. Being a huge fan of everything the band had released thus far, I knew it would be easy to like the new album, so I actually tried to lower my expectations as much as possible prior to the album’s release. The mind games worked, because I loved this album more than expected. (See how that works?) Some of the themes and repeated key words get wearisome after a while, but the album really captures the mix of nostalgia and disgust that Gen-Xers like me feel about their suburban upbringings. The fact that I lived for nearly three years in the same suburb (The Woodlands, TX) where some of the band members grew up makes it all the more powerful for me as they sing about cars and strip malls and somehow make it deeply meaningful.

• Beach House Teen Dream — Beach House makes great music for chilling out and pretending you’re having an out-of-body experience. Their earlier albums seemed somewhat monotonous and muddled to me, but Teen Dream is more melodic than previous releases and easier to digest. Listening to Beach House still feels like the sonic equivalent of the after-effects of a night spent inside the opium den, but it’s a much more mellow vibe this time around. The song structures are more conventional, the production quality is higher, and the band just seems tighter. Being able to distinguish one song from another on this album goes a long way toward making it a more frequent part of my daily playlists.

• Broken Social Scene Forgiveness Rock Record  — A few songs on this album continue to get on my nerves (see Art House Director or Water in Hell), but with gems like Chase Scene, Texaco Bitches, All to All, Highway Slipper Jam and Sentimental X’s erasing the memory of the less-successful songs, it’s easy to include this album on the list. I don’t consider myself a huge fan of Broken Social Scene, and I was never able to get into their music in any substantive way beforehand, but I liked this one immediately and enjoyed the way it continued to grow on me throughout the year.

• Caribou Swim — I don’t know any other bands making music quite like Caribou. Swim is freaky, a little psychedelic and clearly the product of a man who knows a thing or two about intricate structures — the guy has a PhD in mathematics. I read at Pitchfork that Dan Snaith, the genius behind Caribou, wanted this album to sound like liquid dance music, which sounds like a risky strategy for making any kind of meaningful recording. Yet somehow he pulls it off, sounding in some ways like a more serious and talented version of Animal Collective.

• Flying Lotus Cosmogramm — Another album I won’t even pretend to be able to define or categorize, Cosmogramm is luscious and dense music that sounds like a direct link to a short-circuited subconscious mind filled with sound effects from ancient video games. The album has some huge beats and lots of clicking, buzzing and whirring, but it’s not a dance record as far as I can tell. Actually, it’s the kind of thing you might really like to see people trying to use as the basis for some choreography — could be very interesting.

• Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy — Like a lot of folks, I’ve got a love-hate thing going on with Kanye. He’s clearly brilliant, obviously disturbed and perhaps embarrassingly bad at crafting lyrics, but he’s a gifted producer and knows how to make his songs sound better than they have any right to sound based on the content.

• LCD Soundsystem This is Happening — The first time I heard Dance Yrself Clean was unforgettable. Songs that good only come around every few years. So maybe this album makes my best-of-the-year list based on the strength of a single song, but I’m okay with that.

• MGMT Congratulations — I love the fact that they didn’t try to recreate the success of Kids by doing a record of nothing but hook-filled dance tracks. They don’t seem afraid to be making music that feels like it emerged from a 1970s time capsule and then got pumped through a demented modernization algorithm. Siberian Breaks is a great song that continues to sound fresh every time I hear it — probably because it’s actually several different songs rolled up in one package.

• The National High Violet — Listening to previous albums by The National, I’ve had a difficult time embracing the lead singer’s voice. But time and repeated exposure have helped my tastes evolve to the point where I actually appreciate what’s being done here. This is the one record of theirs I can put in heavy rotation without feeling like I’m getting swallowed up by all the droning depression. I don’t want to say it’s a hopeful album, because the lyrics suggest nothing of the sort, but it sounds like maybe there’s some light at the end of the tunnel.

• Sufjan Stevens The Age of Adz — It’s easy to put Sufjan on a pedestal. He’s got a remarkable voice, crafts mind-blowing lyrics, creates dense and intricate songs and ties his albums together like a poet polishing a manuscript. Oh yes, and he’s plenty easy on the eyes. All that stuff aside, what I like about this new record is that it challenges people to appreciate who he is and what he’s doing for the right reasons. You get the sense in listening to him talk in interviews and at his concerts that he’s introducing a new side of himself, and it’s a little disturbing. I love the experimentation on this album, the new ways he’s found to express his musical ideas and the dedication to pure artistic expression regardless of whether it’s well-received, ignored, lauded or entirely forgotten. It’s a courageous and challenging record, and I think it’s a brave step forward for an artist who already had a pretty damn good formula and no real reason to push any further. But I’m glad he did.

• Vampire Weekend Contra — Maybe it’s more of the same from these guys, and sure it can come off as a little smug and maybe even pretentious. But who cares about all that when it’s so much fun to listen to. These guys have a real talent for making pop music that you can play just about any time and not feel like switching to something else because you’re not in the mood. It’s like the songs shift the listener’s consciousness to operate in harmony with the notes, which is pretty rare.

• Shearwater Golden Archipelago — I had the privilege of seeing Jonathan Meiburg perform when I was in Austin for SXSW, and while his voice is rather strange in the context of contemporary music, it’s a sound that really grew on me this year. This album can tend toward the overly dramatic at times, but I like that about it. The intensity makes it a great source for inspiration. Landscape at Speed is just a really cool composition that would be great to hear live.  I could listen to this album on headphones while walking and think about how devastating beautiful things can be, pondering how much we can ache for the transcendent experience. Of course, I have no clue what the lyrics are about because they’re just not front and center. It’s really about the instruments, including the singer’s voice.

• The Tallest Man on Earth The Wild Hunt — This is another guy with an interesting voice, often compared to early Bob Dylan. To me, it’s more like a weird muppet character brought to life. Anyway, thoughts about the guy’s voice will be in your head the first few bars your hear, but after that it becomes its own thing and you forget all about the comparisons. I like King of Spain in particular for its beautiful guitar strumming and passion.

Other albums I liked this year:

• Surfer Blood Astro Coast
• Daft Punk Tron: Legacy Soundtrack
• Yeasayer Odd Blood
• Gil Scott-Heron I’m New Here
• Jonsi Go
• Laura Marling I Speak Because I Can

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