Aga and I planned a short trip to London. Aga had never visited before, so she was quite excited. I was equally anxious to show her some of the things I really like about London – in particular, the shows on West End :)
Of course, life snuck up on us / me, and I had to work a bit in London the first morning. Aga took the opportunity to explore London by herself, while I sat myself down in a coffee shop and worked. It went well, so we agreed to meet up around lunchtime at the Big Ben. Luckily, it was deserted… yeah right.
The crowds notwithstanding, we managed to find each other and took a stroll over the South Bank. We had fish & chips in a genuine-looking pub there (check!), and then went to Tate Modern (check!).
Turns out Aga and I experience modern art… differently. At any rate, we next went on across the Millenium bridge (check!) to St. Paul’s (check!), but were too late to ascend the dome (uncheck!). So we took a bus (check!) towards Piccadilly, spent a bit of time in my favourite bookstore (check!) (Waterstones Piccadilly – 6 stories with only English books), where we each bought a book, and then walked to our theatre to watch a show (check!) – Stomp! Afterwards, we took a riksha tour (check!) to Chinatown (check!) where we had a late chinese dinner.
The next day, Aga went out to the British museum (check!) (sort of next to our hotel), while I met up with Steven (check!) – a friend who lives in London. We chatted quite a bit over some steaming Earl Greys (check!) in the same coffee shop where I was the day before, and then we went out for a walk. We passed Covent Garden (check!) and walked towards Leicester square (check!). Then we turned around for lunch, walking via Oxford street (check!), and picked up Aga along the route.
Side note: we had booked a hotel close to the Piccadilly tube line, so that we could just hop on a tube to get to Heathrow. Turns out that our Sunday flight was leaving so early, it was not possible to make it to Heathrow on time… :s
So we cancelled the last night and booked a hotel close to Heathrow instead. Meaning that we were walking around with a lot of luggage :)
Following the late lunch, Aga’s plan was to go to the London Eye. We waved Steven goodbye and made our way there. We decided to go for fast tickets – more expensive, but hey, why not?
(That turned out to be important later on, and a very good decision.)
The queues weren’t that bad after we had the tickets, so I wasn’t too sure if it was worth it, but the views were great, and the cabin not too crowded.
Afterwards, we discussed what to do, and we figured it’d be nice to go to another show – if we could still make it. We initially wanted to take a bus, but they weren’t showing, so we took a tube instead. We made it to Leicester square again, where Aga headed to the same stall where I bought tickets to Stomp. Seeing how I felt they ripped me off (they sold me “the only tickets left” – for them, plenty of other seats available elsewhere – and they conveniently forgot to mention they were limited visibility… even though I asked for other seats, they assured me “no problem, small theatre”. Grrrrr.), I was not inclined to spend money there again.
The experience with Stomp taught me another thing: I asked whether we would see everything, and the crew replied “didn’t they tell you when you bought the tickets? Hmmms… why don’t you talk to the box office, perhaps they can reseat you.” That worked, and I glimpsed the ticket prices at the theatre. About 25% cheaper for our original seats than the stall where I bought the tickets!!! Talk about commission…
So we picked up a brochure with all the musicals and plays, which had a map of the theatres, and made our way to the theatre of our choice. We got to almost-front-row seats (excellent) to the musical (check!) Charly & the Chocolate Factory. We had a quick dinner before: vegetarian indian (check!), which was rather disappointing. Thankfully, the musical was great. The kids were acting great, although we weren’t too fond of Mike TV nor of Violet Beauregarde – mainly because their introductory songs (which establish the character) were hard to understand. For Mike TV, that was intentional (his mom was understandable and hilarious), but a pity. For Violet, perhaps if we had had different seats, the balance between music and singing might have turned out better… Veruca Salt and Augustus Gloop were fantastic characters, and very well played. Especially Veruca came across like an enormously spoiled brat – very well played.
Following this, we took our suitcases (yes, we’d been dragging our everythings with us the whole day) and got on a tube to Heathrow, where we took a bus to the hotel. We were more than a little pleasantly surprised with our room: freshly refurbished, large, with a huge desk (bigger than my office desk, actually), bathroom with bathtub… And that for less than the other “hotel” (i.e. refurbished house) would have cost. We enjoyed the luxury, woke up early and got back home exhaused and exhilarated.