Let's see if I can remember what we did on our trip to London...
Although this was Day 3 of the vacation, last night was the first night we had slept in London. Neither of us got any appreciable sleep on the airplane so when we finally did get to sleep last night we did plenty of it. I think we skipped right past breakfast today and went straight to lunch.
We again picked up theatre tickets at the Half Price Ticket Booth and planned our evening before we had planned our day. Today's production was "Romeo and Juliet" -- got to get some Shakespeare into a London trip, right? This, however, was not to be typical Shakespeare. More on that later.
With our morning well behind us and our evening all planned, we set out to be good little tourists with our afternoon. We decided on the London Transport Museum over in Covent Garden. I had seen a brochure for a special exhibit on the Covent Garden Flower Market. If you've seen "My Fair Lady" at all (and if you know me, you know that I love that musical) the opening scenes take place outside St. Paul's Church in Covent Garden. Eliza Doolittle is a flower girl at the flower market so of course this exhibit piques my interest. Turns out the exhibit was a very small gallery of some photos and history of the flower market along with a video from the '50s or so. While I had been hoping for a larger exhibit, I spent quite a long time in there reading all the history. Matthew spent a long time on the bench in the middle of the exhibit.
The transit museum itself is also kind of fun and interesting so we wandered around there a bit, too. The little kid in Matthew came out as he played with all the exhibits, including driving a bus and collecting stamps for all the checkpoints on our map.
On our way out from the transit museum, we saw a carousel in Covent Garden for the holidays. I really don't remember where my love of carousels came from, but I'm a total sucker for them. While this one wasn't as artistic as the antique ones I so adore, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to ride a European carousel. (Here's a quiz question: which direction do European carousels turn?) I had actually passed up this opportunity during my semester in London. During Easter, there was a carousel in Covent Garden (probably the same carousel) but as a starving college kid in an expensive city I passed on riding. This time I promised myself that, even though the pound exchange rate was hideous, I wouldn't pass on things like that because they were relatively expensive. So, I bucked up the 4 dollars and left Matthew on the platform to take photos.
With just a couple of hours until our theatre time, we headed off to Oxford Street to do a bit of shopping. We hit the other big department stores -- Marks & Spencer and Debenhams -- as well as a few smaller stores along the way. Again we took in the Christmas decorations. Most of the good lights were on Regent Street, one of several upscale shopping streets in the area. Apparently this is the big place to see Christmas lights in London, and has been for years. The display was based on "The Incredibles" so it felt a bit commercial, but it was still fun to see the different style of Christmas decorations.
I would have liked to look at the lights longer, but alas, it was time to head off to the theatre. We knew from reading the reviews that this would be an unusual production of Romeo & Juliet. After all, the troupe performing it was Icelandic (although we were assured it would be performed in English) and it would include the trapeze. However, it was a bit more out there than we had expected. The characters continually lapsed into Icelandic and the other actors would shout "English!" It was kind of funny at first, but grew quite old. They predominately did this whenever the characters were particularly emotional, especially angry, which actually worked well at first; it just continued too long. For Juliet's nurse, they had an overweight man play the part in bad drag and at one point he came out on stage buck naked with only his hands covering himself. Not quite what I'd want my children in the front row to be seeing.
Now lest you think I dislike everything avant garde, I thought the trapeze and acrobatic stuff worked well. I've actually seen several Shakespeare productions that used similar devices and they can be good. After all, Shakespeare's iambic pentameter can get a bit burdensome and the acrobatic artistry brings you into feeling the action more than focusing on catching all the words. Overall I walked out of the theater thinking it was an interesting evening. But it was definitely a weird Romeo & Juliet.
i sincerely do not know what you are doing here. are you lost? were you
looking for your delicate calico cat, and did you follow her up two flights of stairs
to this room? she is not here. she was here, yes. we gave her a warm bowl of milk, we talked with her about campaign finance reform for a time, and then she bid us good day. i believe she was
going to the post office two blocks down, but i don't quite recall.
for surely you did
not find your way from prinsiana, the least traveled site on
the internet. if you did, though, perhaps you are looking for humor. perhaps you are looking for profundity. perhaps you are looking for answers.
i'm sorry, but you shall go naught-for-three.
