Generally we are not in London long before we trudge off to the West End. We love the theatre (even if they can't spell the word) and no one does it better than London although it has slipped into some of the petty commercialism of Broadway and often repeats itself rather than trying something new. Ordinarily we stay in West End on weekends but branched out this time to South Kensington and so had to trudge back and forth on the tube.
After picking up our theatre and opera tickets, we headed back towards Trafalgar square to catch a great trompe l’oeil exhibition at the National Gallery by the Belgium born Cornelius Gijsbrechts who was the court painter in Denmark in the late 1600s. Some of these pictures were incredible. The guy made clutter an artform. In one case a picture of a cupboard door actually hinges open to show the view on the other side:
Afterwards we walked around the museum front porch and took the shot above of our favorite performance space, St. Martin in the fields. Unfortunately it was too late for a lunchtime concert and too early for noontime. While we had the digital camera warmed up, we shot these photos of that tribute to the naval empire, Trafalgar square. Here's one over Nelson's shoulder as he keeps his eye on Big Ben:
The square is a frequent site of political demonstrations. This day one was going on by folks unhappy with Sadaam. We failed to see if George Bush, Sr. was there. He was probably at home in Houston waiting for us to return -- or is it the W guy who will join him soon?
After a little while hunger got the best of us and we tried to find a restaurant open. We walked by this jewel but didn't go in; given our Texas roots, we couldn't pass up a photo. A year living in Europe has convinced us to never eat on this continent in a restuarant that claims to be new world (and McDonald's is not Scotch).
Still, it's good to know that wherever you go, you're never far from Texas. (It's that big!)
Finally we found a fish restaurant (but it served people too). It turned out to be good; we checked later and found it recommended in our guidebook. Afterwards we had time to kill and, guess what, London has bookstores and, unlike Paris, most books are in English. (OK, we did buy something called Beowulf that was pretty far from English.) Soon we had about 20 pounds of reading material and we were wondering how we'd make it back to the hotel, much less home with the tiny suitcases we had brought.
The Saturday night musical turned out to be pretty good, London's best musical of 1999 called Spend, Spend, Spend. It's an "organic" musical (that means it has songs that have something to do with the plot; remember those!) This one is about a gritty Yorkshire lottery winner with 5 husbands (not at the same time) who goes from rags to riches and back to rags, picking up a little wisdom along the way but not losing her attitude. (In fact, on opening night, the cast invited the then 60ish real-life heroine on stage and she proceeded to moon the crowd). We'd recommend it (the musical, that is, we don't have that much experience with mooning London theatre crowds).
The next morning we were up for that once-in-a-thousand-year experience, the Millenium dome. Please join us by clicking here.
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last updated 21 June 2007
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