London (Round Two)

Westminster Abbey and Big Ben

We made our second trip to London, England between March 23-26. Since we had already been to London once, we really just wanted to have a more relaxing trip while hitting a few of the tourist attractions we'd missed the last time over. Since the West End of London is also the only other place on earth on par (or better) with Broadway as far as theatre is concerned, we also figured we'd try to catch a show or two.

We flew out on Friday (March 23) around 10AM and made it to Stansted Airport without incident. Paul (Barnes, our friend who lives in London) picked us up from the airport and we went directly downtown and took the London Underground (London has an awesome subway system) over to St. Paul's.

As the bright few of you might have deduced (yeah, like I have bright friends), our first stop was St. Paul's Cathedral. We had visited this beautiful, monstrous church on our last visit, but we hadn't been allowed to go to the top. Since we didn't have a lot of time before meeting another friend for drinks, we figured we'd climb to the top of St. Paul's and check out the view of the city.

When I say climb, I am NOT kidding. There are several tiny stone and metal spiral staircases leading up, and some parts are so small I had to hunch over to get through without bashing my head on the ceiling (and I'm only 5'10"). This is a serious hike, and not for the out-of-shape. There are several levels, though, and the climb is worth it as the views of the city are spectacular. It would have been even better had the weather been a little clearer, however, they were still pretty we still enjoyed it. Here are some pictures from various spots on St. Paul's Cathedral:

• A shot of the Thames with the London Eye in the background
• The clocktower spire of St. Paul's, the Thames, and the London Eye again
• Tower Bridge spanning the Thames
• Paul & Lisa with London as a backdrop

After all that climbing and then wandering around the ground floor of the church, we had worked up quite an appetite (and thirst)! Paul recommended a pub in the area, and I've yet to go wrong with a pub lunch. We ended up having some Belgian beer (Hoegaarden), which was a good wheat beer, and pizza for lunch. We then jumped back on the Underground and made our way to Canary Wharf where we met Dave (Jewiss, another friend in London) for a few drinks at "The Cat & The Canary."

A few pints (and hours) later, we made our way back to Paul's place in Little Hadham. Viv (Paul's wife) met us at the house, and we chatted for a bit before heading over to the Nag's Head Pub, which is an awesome pub just down the street from their house, for dinner. The food was excellent (as usual), and the patrons and owners remembered us from our previous visit (I guess we make an impression), which made us feel right at home. Dinner was followed by a few games of darts and a few more pints (when in Rome...), which closed out the evening quite nicely.

Greenwich was our first destination on Saturday. Just East of London, this town has the National Maritime museum and the Royal Observatory, both of which we checked out. The Maritime Museum was interesting since the British Empire was the superpower when the world was explored by sea. They had lots of neat stuff, but my favorite was in the hands-on (i.e. kids) area: It was a game where you had to adjust a cannon's height and lateral settings in order to sink another ship before it sank you (What can I say? I'll never grow up!).

At the top of the hill overlooking the Maritime Museum (as well as Greenwich & London) is The Royal Observatory. (By the way, the climb up THIS hill is no small climb either, and Lisa thought I was trying to kill her with all of the climbing we were doing.) The view from atop this hill was pretty good since you're so high (Duh! Why else would they put the observatory there?), and again, it would've only been better had the weather been clearer. The observatory mainly tells how "Greenwich Mean Time" became standard. Of course I already knew that, but it was still neat to see the museum/observatory and see how it all came about.

• The Maritime Museum viewed from the observatory
• Mike & Lisa on opposite sides of the Prime Meridian

We were getting hungry, so we grabbed some chips (french fries for all the non-English folk out there) from a shop in Greenwich. These were, as one would expect of chips in England, excellent. As we ate, we walked through the open-air market (selling various crap) and made our way down to the Thames. We saw the Cutty Sark, a large old sailboat that I don't know the history of (but I do know it has a Whiskey named after it) but is on display in dry dock by the river.

Our mode of transportation back from Greenwich into London was something different: The Royal River Thames boat cruise brought us back via the Thames. This lasted about an hour, but afforded some spectacular views of London's sights. It's just neat to come down the river toward and under Tower Bridge, past the Tower of London, past St. Paul's, past the London Eye, and then dock just next to Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. It was very cool, and definitely worth doing (highly recommended). Here are some pics from the boat ride:

• The HMS Belfast and Tower Bridge
• The Tower Of London
• former entrance to the Tower of London - The Traitor's Gate
• The London Eye
• Lisa & Paul on the boat in front of Big Ben

After getting off the boat, we made our way through all the damn tourists around Big Ben toward the West End (theatre district). We found The Palace Theatre and picked up our tickets for that evenings performance of Les Miserables (I had ordered the tickets online a month before). With that out of the way and a few hours until the show, we decided to check out the surrounding area a bit. This part of town seems to be a hodge-podge of things. Let's see: there's Chinatown, Soho, Covent Garden, etc. Let's just say that within a 5 minute walking distance of one another (if that), there are tons of restaurants, theatres, pubs, strip clubs, sex shops, clothing stores, arcades, etc. It's just a strange part of town, and something I'm glad we saw (we had missed it on the first trip).

At the recommendation of a friend, we went in search of FunLand (formerly SegaLand?). What an incredible place: at least six floors of gaming. They have arcade games (more than you could even imagine), skee-ball, bumper cars, go-karts, air-hockey, pool tables... I could go on forever. On top of all that, they have a cafe AND a bar. We took the escalator to the top and just walked back down through each level taking it all in. The only disappointment: I didn't see any sports games (throwing footballs through wholes for yardage, batting cages, etc). Add those in and I might never leave!

We had dinner with Paul and Viv at the Deep Pan Pizza restaurant. It was so nice to have pizza just like it is at home (thick crust, good sauce, etc). Not only that, but they had a buffet, and it wasn't full of pizzas with pineapple and other nasty toppings loved by the Danish people. Naturally, I gorged myself and was one happy guy!

With all that good food in our bellies, we walked back to the Palace Theatre for an absolutely fabulous performance of Les Miserables. I had never seen it before, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It didn't hurt that we had awesome seats: row 6 of the Stalls section (we were 6 rows behind the orchestra). The actors were incredible and all had such strong voices. The show was superbly done, and I would recommend it to anyone. I'm really glad we got to see this show in London!

After the show, we made our way back to Paul and Viv's and called it a night. We had to take a few different trains to get back to the car, and the Underground is VERY crowded after the shows let out. We had to literally push our way into one of the trains, which was mildly entertaining. After getting off that train and going to the next platform, we then had to stop over a drunk man to get into the next train (go figure: there was plenty of room in his end of that car). At the next stop he proceeded to lean out the door and leave his dinner on the platform: needless to say, nobody got on through that door at that stop. Fortunately, we got off on the other side of the train and made our way home without further incidents.

On Sunday, Lisa & I caught the train into town from Bishops Stortford and then took the Underground over to Leicester Square. We had seen plenty of "half-price ticket" shops that supposedly have tickets to shows the day of the performance. We had wanted to see the Lion King, but they were sold out when I called just over a month in advance. We stopped by several of these shops, but none of them had tickets, either. Then we see one place that has a sign saying they had tickets for today's matinee performance.

We go up to the window, and the little old man behind the counter explains that he has a few sets of tickets that the theatre just sent over. He has seats for 35, 40, and 45 pounds ($1.50 = 1 £). We choose the 40 pound seats (figuring they'll probably be pretty good since we spent 42.75 £ for the seats the previous night. He doesn't accept credit cards, so I had to run to an ATM. The guy is so nice, he promises to hold a pair of tickets for us. We get back to the window and purchase the tickets. He hands them over and shows us the date, theatre, etc just to show us that everything is in order. He shows us the seats are in the Grand Circle. I ask to see a theatre map, but he says he doesn't have one since they sell seats to every theatre in town (he would need a map of every theatre). However, he assures us that they're great seats right in the middle of the theatre. The little old guy is just so nice! We're just excited that we'll get to see another show we wanted to see even if it was a little pricey (they don't sell half-price seats to the shows people actually want to see).

Since it's an afternoon performance, we only have about 3 hours before we need to get down there, and we still need to eat. We decide to head for the British Museum, which has free admission and tons of historical stuff. We eventually find our way there (got a little lost and walked around for 15 minutes, but we made it). The museum turns out to be fairly interesting and a good way to kill a few hours. We spent our time mostly in the Egyptian, Greek / Roman and American sections (gotta see what they think of us, right?).

The most interesting (and famous) item was the Rosetta Stone. This stone was the key to translating Hieroglyphics. I knew that, but never knew why. It's because the stone has the same writings in 3 different languages (Hieroglyphics, Egyptian text, and Greek). Anyway, it's not overly exciting to see, but hey, I saw it and you didn't! The neat stuff were the Egyptian tomb relics: they have lots of mummies and sarcophaguses on display. They also have lots of Egyptian statues and such, as well as the some of the original statues from the pediment of the Parthenon in Athens. Here are some pics from the museum:

• the middle chamber inside the museum
• Egyptian figure
• Egyptian wall-carvings
• Something Greek that looks cool, but I forget where it's from
• Sculpture of a Centaur battling a human (from the Parthenon)

Before we knew it, it was time to head down toward the theatre. We stopped off at a pub just down the street from the theatre, The Marquis de Anglesey, for a quick bite before the show. As with every other pub meal we've had in London, the food was excellent! We both had the special (turkey with gravy, stuffing, roasted vegetables, and roasted potatoes), and it was delicious!

Show time! We line up in the proper line for entrance to the Grand Circle of the Lyceum Theatre. We look at other people's tickets in line and fortunately they look just like ours, so we're feeling good that we didn't buy fake tickets. It is then that we realize that the Grand Circle is the very top balcony. The theatres are really set up pretty well, though, so even that doesn't discourage us. I start to wonder how much our tickets actually retail for, and unfortunately I find the answer: 15 pounds! I'm trying to remain calm despite having spent 166% above the ticket price.

We begin the long climb to the top of the theatre, and we finally make it. We buy our program and show our tickets to the usher. Well, I guess we're lucky in one respect: after the long, tiring climb up, we don't have far to go to get to our seats. Our seats are in the VERY LAST row of the theatre and 6 seats from the rightmost edge. I'm still not sure what prevented me from blowing a gasket and running back to the "half-price tickets" booth and strangling that bastard! I tried to remain calm and enjoy the show, though.

The show began, and I have to say, I felt a little better. The animal costumes were really impressive. The giraffes looked real (performers on stilts bent over with stilts on arms [front legs] as well), the elephants moved around (four performers, each in one leg of the beast), and there were birds flying about on strings. I thought the crowd went a little overboard applauding every new animal that came out, but I was entertained none-the-less. Things are looking up, right? Sadly, that was not the case, and that ended up being the high-point of the show.

We just didn't enjoy the show. Maybe the fact that I paid $60 to sit in the very last row of the theatre had something to do with it. I'm not sure it did, though. The show just didn't live up to expectations. The songs that were added were not done by Elton John & Tim Rice: they were done by Hans Zimmer, and while I like some of his other stuff (Cool Runnings soundtrack), the new songs just weren't that good. Also, I was not at all impressed with a few of the actors: The woman playing Rafiki, the man playing Timon, and the boy playing Simba just didn't live up to the standard that I'd expect from a London show.

I'm just wondering where those seats were for the 35 pound tickets that the "half-price tickets" guy offered me. There were some people standing in the back. I suppose they could have been SRO (Standing Room Only), but I'm just wondering how that lying-cheat dirtbag would have described those tickets. I swear, if that office hadn't been closed after the show and I hadn't been flying out first thing Monday morning to be back at work, I would've gone down there and strangled him! I'm already plotting my revenge on my next trip to London...

After the show, we caught our train back to Bishops Stortford, where Paul picked us up. We then went back to the Nag's Head Pub for our farewell dinner. The food was excellent, the beer was refreshing, and the dart games were enjoyable. This closed out the weekend perfectly, and we flew back to Copenhagen in the morning without any problems with another great weekend in the books. I hope you enjoyed the story!

Here are some other pictures from our trip:

• Big Ben: up close & personal
• Trafalgar Square

Mike & Lisa on a boat in front of Tower Bridge & The HMS Belfast

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