connielane (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
connielane) wrote2007-03-27 10:13 am
connielane) wrote2007-03-27 10:13 am
London-cation, Part 6 (and last) - Anything's Better Than Crawling ;-)
Part 1 - The Philadelphia Story
Part 2 - Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
Part 3 - Indulging in Equitation
Part 4 - Light the Kettle!
Part 5 - By the Power of Grayskull!
By this point in my vacation I was starting to wind down. I made the further mistake on this last day in London of wearing the wrong hosiery with the wrong shoes, which led to lots of wrong-rubbing and blisters, which did not wait until the end of the day to manifest. In fact, by about noon, my dogs were already ... barking.
Nevertheless, it was one of the better days I spent in London.
I had designated this last day as Shopping Day. I made my pilgrimage to the famous Harrod's department store, and absolutely marveled at that wonderland of retail.
When you first step into Harrod's, there is a security guard passing out maps. You will definitely need a map if you want to spend any time in this store. It is HUGE. And you will be too dazzled and distracted by all of the fancy merchandise to put the directional signs to proper use.
My first stop was the "arcade," which is a rare spot in Harrod's where affordable things can be found for souvenirs and gifts. I spent some time in ladies footwear, where I ogled Jimmy Choos and Ferragamos and looked in vain for a display of Manolo Blahniks. I strolled through ladies fashions and coveted the designer labels (as well as the tiny body I would have to have to fit into them). I saw an enticing sign saying something about a Chocolate Bar, which sounded like my kind of place to booze up, but I settled for a quick glance at the menu and refrained from buying a £5 cup of hot chocolate.
After getting my fill of staring at things I couldn't possibly buy I went to remind myself of my true economic stature by lunching at McDonald's. Which was okay, but there's something very off about the McDonald's fries in Britain.
From there I went to the Victoria & Albert Museum, which was fairly close. As I said above, though, this was about the time my feet started to give out, and I didn't have the energy to look at much more than the sculpture room (which was rather extraordinary in its own right) and a couple of the side rooms with Indian and Muslim artifacts.
Next I found my way to the Albert Memorial, which I barely registered to be part of a huge park of some sort. Naturally I spotted the famous building pictured below right next door.
Sadly, I did not go in, so I could not discover how many holes were there. :P I did, however, have a pleasant memory of watching the live feed of JKR being interviewed by Stephen Fry there, shortly after OotP was released. In glancing at the map to the park I had barely paid attention to, I noticed a statue that I simply had to see. So I wandered into and through the incredibly gorgeous Kensington Gardens.
I found that it was easier on my feet to walk on the grass than on the pavement, so I did. And after quite a walk - to the opposite end of the park - I found what I was looking for.
Peter Pan
I'm fairly sure that the park portions of Finding Neverland were filmed in Kensington Gardens. I could almost see J.M. Barrie sitting on one of those benches and watching the Llewelyn Davies family from afar or comforting Peter. Here is the plaque that is at the foot of the statue. It reads:
"Peter Pan
The boy who would not grow up
Sculptor Sir George Frampton R.A. 1860-1928
This bronze, a gift of Sir James Barrie OM 1860-1937
the creator of Peter Pan, was placed here
1st May 1912
HRH Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon
unveiled this plaque presented by the
Friends of Hyde Park & Kensington Gardens
1st May 1997
Despite the joy at getting as close as I'm likely ever to get to Peter Pan, the walk had taken its toll and I was close to tears from the pain. I made it to a bus stop and was relieved to have a minutes rest. I rode down to the Notting Hill area, grabbed a Frappucino from Starbucks, and - as there were no empty seats inside - sat at one of the outdoor tables (deciding that I preferred to sit in the cold wind with my cold drink than stand any longer, no matter how warm it was in the coffee shop).
I had a couple more gifts to buy (having acquired only one from Harrod's), and I found what I needed at Waterstone's (a book for my dad), WH Smith's (some Galaxy chocolate for coworkers), and - in a fit of Equus nerditude - Boots drug store (a Milkybar and Mars bar for me :P). But I still had an hour or so to kill before I could get dinner, and I felt the need to get some proper pictures of the Westminster area and Big Ben, so back to the Tube I went. I couldn't bear the thought of all that walking, but I fired up my iPod and listened to "Wizard People, Dear Reader" to distract myself from the pain - and it actually worked for a while!
Unfortunately, the sun was not in a great place for taking good pictures of Big Ben, but I snapped some decent shots nonetheless.
It was now a reasonable time to be heading for a pre-theater dinner spot, and I knew exactly where I wanted to go. A place less than a hundred yards from the Gielgud Theatre (where I would be seeing Equus a third time), on - I kid you not - Rupert Street, called Cafe Fish. Naturally, I was not intending to leave London without getting some fish 'n chips. This might have been a fancier seafood restaurant than most fish 'n chip places, but it was somewhere I wasn't afraid to sit for a couple of hours.
I was given an excellent table, right next to a window looking out onto the street, and I had the most leisurely and pleasant meal of my trip. I even got a decadent dessert (white chocolate cheesecake with blueberry garnish), and the waitress was apparently bewildered at my wanting to keep the last couple bites of my bread for getting the sweet taste out of my mouth after dessert - she kept trying to take it from me!
At 7:00, I headed to the theater for the (*sniff*) last time, handed the usher my ticket, and was told that I could not go to my seat until 7:25. My ticket was for a seat on the stage, and to get to them, we had to wind through part of the backstage area, which was presumably being occupied by the cast and various crew until a few minutes before the show started. I spotted![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shocolate, magicofisis, abigail89, and sheepybunbuns, who also had stage seats for the evening, and we started a queue by the door to the backstage area leading to the stage seats. This queue area was also the area where people who were seated in the Stalls traveled through to get to their seats (so we had to keep explaining to people that we were waiting outside the door marked "Private" so that we could get to our seats, not meet Dan Radcliffe before the show or something :P). We chatted with the ushers who were guarding the door - one of them very cute indeed - until it was time to go. The cute one was informing people that they couldn't take their wine glasses into the theater itself, and joked "You can take pictures of whatever you want during the show; just don't bring the glasses into the theater." (Okay, it was much funnier in context.)
Finally the bell rang that let us know it was time to take our seats. Another nice usher checked our bags for recording devices and directed us to a narrow passageway and a set of stairs. I was on the front row of the stage seating, and kind of toward the front of the stage (seat 3). I instantly found that this was not going to be the most comfortable seating arrangement ever, because the seats were fairly low, and you had to lean over the railing to see the stage. On the upside, at least they padded the railing, but on the downside, I was having to lean on my already excruciatingly swollen feet. However, if I had been any taller, it would have been even more uncomfortable, so I'm not complaining.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had an interesting sight at this particular performance. I remembered Dan saying something in an interview about J.K. Rowling coming to one of the performances (not that she had already, that she was coming some time during the run). So, having a much better view of the audience than previous performances, I idly looked around the theatre, wondering if she might be there. It was then that I spotted, sitting at the end of the front row in the Dress Circle...
Alan Rickman.
I didn't squee nearly as much asabigail89 apparently did, but it was exciting nonetheless. Right after I spotted him, I saw someone pestering him for his autograph, which he obliged fairly graciously (as far as I could tell). I didn't have long to stare at him, though, because the show started. There seemed to be a couple of tiny hiccups in the performance. Really small things like stray bits of horse costume (I think that's what it was) stranded on the stage, one of which I saw Dan had to throw to the side as he was moving a bit of the set of a scene change. I should add that moving a bit of the set was not a snafu, but rather part of the production. Almost all of the actors had to do this between scenes, since there was no real furniture or anything, save four blocks that served as various things. Another little snafu was Jenny Agutter jumping the gun and starting one of her lines before another actor had finished. However, she covered it beautifully, and I doubt that anyone who hadn't seen the play before would even have noticed.
I've said already that seeing the play from above the stage was a very interesting perspective. You're much closer to the actors and can see more of the subtleties of their performances, especially Dan, who has some rather incredible in-character moments when no one but the stage folks are looking. For instance, after the climax of the play and the flashback to the blinding of the horses, Richard Griffiths wraps him in a blue blanket and calms him so that he'll sleep. While Richard delivers his final monologue, Dan is lying there, still twitching, still absolutely the boy who's just come out the other side of a tremendous nightmare, until the stage goes black.
It was at this performance that I noticed another little thing that bothered me about the production, aside from the occasionally overused music. The director, Thea Sharrock, worked with Peter Shaffer to make some minor changes to the dialogue - "swizz" to "con," 50p to 5 pounds as a small bet on a horse race, a few more modern television jingles, etc. But I think they missed something. When Alan's mother Dora tells Dysart that Alan loved horses, she includes the fact that Alan used to watch a lot of westerns on the neighbors' television. Now, westerns were probably something that was on television a lot for the 1973 Alan of the original production, who partially grew up in the 1960s, probably with western-themed television programs and spaghetti westerns with Clint Eastwood. But westerns just aren't as common now. Again, that's not something a lot of people would notice, I guess, but I did find myself thinking "Um, what westerns was he watching as a kid in the late 90s and early 00s?"
Still, though, even after the third time, it was a very moving experience. I stole another glance at Mr. Rickman during the curtain call and saw him giving a slow clap - which reminded me very much of Snape clapping about Lupin being the new DADA teacher in PoA - but he didn't stand. It seems that Brits are a bit stingy about standing ovations. Americans, of course, will stand for just about anyone, and I certainly stood to make my approval known to the cast as they took their bows. But English folk seem to be more conservative about that kind of thing.
After leaving the theater, I bade farewell toshocolate and the gals, decided my feet were absolutely not up to hanging around the stage door in hopes of getting an autograph, and headed back to Barons Court for a good night's sleep before the long trip home. When I got off at the Tube station, I decided to throw caution to the wind and take off my shoes to walk in sock feet back to the flat. Even though the ground was cold as ice, it still felt so much better than the shoes. But eventually I started to lose feeling, so the shoes went back on. It was very slow going back to the flat, but I got there and had another nice chat with K8, who had just recently learned that she had a new niece.
I was considering pulling an all-nighter, but decided it wasn't necessary, especially as K8 had kindly set an alarm on her phone (which I was borrowing so that the taxi company that was taking me to the train station could let me know they were on their way). So I got a good night's sleep after all, and got packed and everything in time to be picked up by a very comfortable car and taken to Victoria where I caught a train to the airport.
As I said when I first arrived home, the less said about my trip home the better. It truly seemed like one trial after another - not to mention one insanely long queue after another.
The trip was wonderful, and surprisingly low in my characteristic travel accidents. One thing that struck me more than perhaps anything else on my trip was that I'd forgotten how very much walking was involved in London travel, especially on the Tube. And of all the sights I saw in that lovely city, I saw more of what is in the picture below than anything else...
:P It's good to be home, and I'm not even thinking yet about when I want to go back...
But I most certainly do want to go back.
Part 2 - Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
Part 3 - Indulging in Equitation
Part 4 - Light the Kettle!
Part 5 - By the Power of Grayskull!
By this point in my vacation I was starting to wind down. I made the further mistake on this last day in London of wearing the wrong hosiery with the wrong shoes, which led to lots of wrong-rubbing and blisters, which did not wait until the end of the day to manifest. In fact, by about noon, my dogs were already ... barking.
Nevertheless, it was one of the better days I spent in London.
I had designated this last day as Shopping Day. I made my pilgrimage to the famous Harrod's department store, and absolutely marveled at that wonderland of retail.
When you first step into Harrod's, there is a security guard passing out maps. You will definitely need a map if you want to spend any time in this store. It is HUGE. And you will be too dazzled and distracted by all of the fancy merchandise to put the directional signs to proper use.
My first stop was the "arcade," which is a rare spot in Harrod's where affordable things can be found for souvenirs and gifts. I spent some time in ladies footwear, where I ogled Jimmy Choos and Ferragamos and looked in vain for a display of Manolo Blahniks. I strolled through ladies fashions and coveted the designer labels (as well as the tiny body I would have to have to fit into them). I saw an enticing sign saying something about a Chocolate Bar, which sounded like my kind of place to booze up, but I settled for a quick glance at the menu and refrained from buying a £5 cup of hot chocolate.
After getting my fill of staring at things I couldn't possibly buy I went to remind myself of my true economic stature by lunching at McDonald's. Which was okay, but there's something very off about the McDonald's fries in Britain.
From there I went to the Victoria & Albert Museum, which was fairly close. As I said above, though, this was about the time my feet started to give out, and I didn't have the energy to look at much more than the sculpture room (which was rather extraordinary in its own right) and a couple of the side rooms with Indian and Muslim artifacts.
Next I found my way to the Albert Memorial, which I barely registered to be part of a huge park of some sort. Naturally I spotted the famous building pictured below right next door.
Sadly, I did not go in, so I could not discover how many holes were there. :P I did, however, have a pleasant memory of watching the live feed of JKR being interviewed by Stephen Fry there, shortly after OotP was released. In glancing at the map to the park I had barely paid attention to, I noticed a statue that I simply had to see. So I wandered into and through the incredibly gorgeous Kensington Gardens.
I found that it was easier on my feet to walk on the grass than on the pavement, so I did. And after quite a walk - to the opposite end of the park - I found what I was looking for.
Peter Pan
I'm fairly sure that the park portions of Finding Neverland were filmed in Kensington Gardens. I could almost see J.M. Barrie sitting on one of those benches and watching the Llewelyn Davies family from afar or comforting Peter. Here is the plaque that is at the foot of the statue. It reads:
The boy who would not grow up
Sculptor Sir George Frampton R.A. 1860-1928
This bronze, a gift of Sir James Barrie OM 1860-1937
the creator of Peter Pan, was placed here
1st May 1912
HRH Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon
unveiled this plaque presented by the
Friends of Hyde Park & Kensington Gardens
1st May 1997
Despite the joy at getting as close as I'm likely ever to get to Peter Pan, the walk had taken its toll and I was close to tears from the pain. I made it to a bus stop and was relieved to have a minutes rest. I rode down to the Notting Hill area, grabbed a Frappucino from Starbucks, and - as there were no empty seats inside - sat at one of the outdoor tables (deciding that I preferred to sit in the cold wind with my cold drink than stand any longer, no matter how warm it was in the coffee shop).
I had a couple more gifts to buy (having acquired only one from Harrod's), and I found what I needed at Waterstone's (a book for my dad), WH Smith's (some Galaxy chocolate for coworkers), and - in a fit of Equus nerditude - Boots drug store (a Milkybar and Mars bar for me :P). But I still had an hour or so to kill before I could get dinner, and I felt the need to get some proper pictures of the Westminster area and Big Ben, so back to the Tube I went. I couldn't bear the thought of all that walking, but I fired up my iPod and listened to "Wizard People, Dear Reader" to distract myself from the pain - and it actually worked for a while!
Unfortunately, the sun was not in a great place for taking good pictures of Big Ben, but I snapped some decent shots nonetheless.
It was now a reasonable time to be heading for a pre-theater dinner spot, and I knew exactly where I wanted to go. A place less than a hundred yards from the Gielgud Theatre (where I would be seeing Equus a third time), on - I kid you not - Rupert Street, called Cafe Fish. Naturally, I was not intending to leave London without getting some fish 'n chips. This might have been a fancier seafood restaurant than most fish 'n chip places, but it was somewhere I wasn't afraid to sit for a couple of hours.
I was given an excellent table, right next to a window looking out onto the street, and I had the most leisurely and pleasant meal of my trip. I even got a decadent dessert (white chocolate cheesecake with blueberry garnish), and the waitress was apparently bewildered at my wanting to keep the last couple bites of my bread for getting the sweet taste out of my mouth after dessert - she kept trying to take it from me!
At 7:00, I headed to the theater for the (*sniff*) last time, handed the usher my ticket, and was told that I could not go to my seat until 7:25. My ticket was for a seat on the stage, and to get to them, we had to wind through part of the backstage area, which was presumably being occupied by the cast and various crew until a few minutes before the show started. I spotted
shocolate, magicofisis, abigail89, and sheepybunbuns, who also had stage seats for the evening, and we started a queue by the door to the backstage area leading to the stage seats. This queue area was also the area where people who were seated in the Stalls traveled through to get to their seats (so we had to keep explaining to people that we were waiting outside the door marked "Private" so that we could get to our seats, not meet Dan Radcliffe before the show or something :P). We chatted with the ushers who were guarding the door - one of them very cute indeed - until it was time to go. The cute one was informing people that they couldn't take their wine glasses into the theater itself, and joked "You can take pictures of whatever you want during the show; just don't bring the glasses into the theater." (Okay, it was much funnier in context.)Finally the bell rang that let us know it was time to take our seats. Another nice usher checked our bags for recording devices and directed us to a narrow passageway and a set of stairs. I was on the front row of the stage seating, and kind of toward the front of the stage (seat 3). I instantly found that this was not going to be the most comfortable seating arrangement ever, because the seats were fairly low, and you had to lean over the railing to see the stage. On the upside, at least they padded the railing, but on the downside, I was having to lean on my already excruciatingly swollen feet. However, if I had been any taller, it would have been even more uncomfortable, so I'm not complaining.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had an interesting sight at this particular performance. I remembered Dan saying something in an interview about J.K. Rowling coming to one of the performances (not that she had already, that she was coming some time during the run). So, having a much better view of the audience than previous performances, I idly looked around the theatre, wondering if she might be there. It was then that I spotted, sitting at the end of the front row in the Dress Circle...
Alan Rickman.
I didn't squee nearly as much as
abigail89 apparently did, but it was exciting nonetheless. Right after I spotted him, I saw someone pestering him for his autograph, which he obliged fairly graciously (as far as I could tell). I didn't have long to stare at him, though, because the show started. There seemed to be a couple of tiny hiccups in the performance. Really small things like stray bits of horse costume (I think that's what it was) stranded on the stage, one of which I saw Dan had to throw to the side as he was moving a bit of the set of a scene change. I should add that moving a bit of the set was not a snafu, but rather part of the production. Almost all of the actors had to do this between scenes, since there was no real furniture or anything, save four blocks that served as various things. Another little snafu was Jenny Agutter jumping the gun and starting one of her lines before another actor had finished. However, she covered it beautifully, and I doubt that anyone who hadn't seen the play before would even have noticed.I've said already that seeing the play from above the stage was a very interesting perspective. You're much closer to the actors and can see more of the subtleties of their performances, especially Dan, who has some rather incredible in-character moments when no one but the stage folks are looking. For instance, after the climax of the play and the flashback to the blinding of the horses, Richard Griffiths wraps him in a blue blanket and calms him so that he'll sleep. While Richard delivers his final monologue, Dan is lying there, still twitching, still absolutely the boy who's just come out the other side of a tremendous nightmare, until the stage goes black.
It was at this performance that I noticed another little thing that bothered me about the production, aside from the occasionally overused music. The director, Thea Sharrock, worked with Peter Shaffer to make some minor changes to the dialogue - "swizz" to "con," 50p to 5 pounds as a small bet on a horse race, a few more modern television jingles, etc. But I think they missed something. When Alan's mother Dora tells Dysart that Alan loved horses, she includes the fact that Alan used to watch a lot of westerns on the neighbors' television. Now, westerns were probably something that was on television a lot for the 1973 Alan of the original production, who partially grew up in the 1960s, probably with western-themed television programs and spaghetti westerns with Clint Eastwood. But westerns just aren't as common now. Again, that's not something a lot of people would notice, I guess, but I did find myself thinking "Um, what westerns was he watching as a kid in the late 90s and early 00s?"
Still, though, even after the third time, it was a very moving experience. I stole another glance at Mr. Rickman during the curtain call and saw him giving a slow clap - which reminded me very much of Snape clapping about Lupin being the new DADA teacher in PoA - but he didn't stand. It seems that Brits are a bit stingy about standing ovations. Americans, of course, will stand for just about anyone, and I certainly stood to make my approval known to the cast as they took their bows. But English folk seem to be more conservative about that kind of thing.
After leaving the theater, I bade farewell to
shocolate and the gals, decided my feet were absolutely not up to hanging around the stage door in hopes of getting an autograph, and headed back to Barons Court for a good night's sleep before the long trip home. When I got off at the Tube station, I decided to throw caution to the wind and take off my shoes to walk in sock feet back to the flat. Even though the ground was cold as ice, it still felt so much better than the shoes. But eventually I started to lose feeling, so the shoes went back on. It was very slow going back to the flat, but I got there and had another nice chat with K8, who had just recently learned that she had a new niece.I was considering pulling an all-nighter, but decided it wasn't necessary, especially as K8 had kindly set an alarm on her phone (which I was borrowing so that the taxi company that was taking me to the train station could let me know they were on their way). So I got a good night's sleep after all, and got packed and everything in time to be picked up by a very comfortable car and taken to Victoria where I caught a train to the airport.
As I said when I first arrived home, the less said about my trip home the better. It truly seemed like one trial after another - not to mention one insanely long queue after another.
The trip was wonderful, and surprisingly low in my characteristic travel accidents. One thing that struck me more than perhaps anything else on my trip was that I'd forgotten how very much walking was involved in London travel, especially on the Tube. And of all the sights I saw in that lovely city, I saw more of what is in the picture below than anything else...
:P It's good to be home, and I'm not even thinking yet about when I want to go back...
But I most certainly do want to go back.
no subject
when we saw Gypsy in New York, Bernadette Peters got a huge ovation the first second she came on - how did they know she wasn't going to be crap? And they wrere wrong - she was fully as dreadful as I dreaded!
no subject
"
I think they still see the same old John Wayne ones - I know I certainly did as a kid, because my Dad like them.
Sounds like, travelling aside, you enjoyed your sojourn in London (and I agree, Harrods is much better than Fortnum & Masons - did you go downstairs into the food halls?).
Oh, and did you post the picture of the House advert? I can't remember seeing it in your posts... :-)
no subject
I didn't post the House advert;
no subject
The walking wasn't so bad (even for the unfit person like myself) because as your photos show there is just so much to see you almost forget how far you walked. Then again I was wearing runners.
I'm glad you got to really enjoy the play. It sounds as though it was fantastic and makes me want to actually read it now.
Well I think your whole trip has sounded fantastic and really what is travelling without a few mishaps LOL. At least you didn't slip down a flight of stairs like I did :).
no subject
I still have a little glow-in-the-dark playmobile ghost I bought in the toy department at Harrod's 22 years ago.
And one of the best moments of my life was experiencing an 800-voice choir perform Handel's Messiah in the Royal Albert Hall.
Sigh.
I wish it was possible to bottle London. But your recaps are about the next best thing.
Because in my idealised memory I had forgotten all about those ever-present stairs.