This morning, I was planning on getting up very early and heading out so that I could be at the Tower of London right around when they opened. That... didn't so much happen. Grant was debating coming with me; his Mini U.N. stuff starts today, so he didn't know if he'd be busy; but he decided to sleep in instead. When I stepped outside, however, it was already starting to rain. I was very glad today that I had my umbrella to hand.
The Tube trip down to the Tower Hill stop also took a lot longer than I was hoping. They were having problems with various lines; there had been signaling problems on the Central line, and so Circle and District (the only two that service Tower Hill) were both suffering severe delays and I had a heck of a time figuring it out. Finally I got there, just after 10. Walking over to the Tower itself was like swimming with all the rain, so once I had bought my ticket I decided to eat something and dry out a bit before going into the Tower itself. There's a company I keep seeing around London called "Eat.", and they had a store in the little shopping complex just outside the Tower. I got a chicken, tomato, and pesto sandwich, which was really good. There were green lettuce-y type leaves and pine nuts and it was very well done. Then I went over and got in line to go in. The thing about being in London right now, though, is that everyone is on vacation from school, not just me. The entire place was swarming with people.
I went inside, and started with the walkway and the walls. I basically went in and out of several towers along the outside walls, and took lots of pictures. One tower had a replica of the king's bed (which made me feel right at home, after Chenonceau and Amboise!), one had various English monarch's crowns (with all the jewels removed, or with paste replicas), one had examples of weaponry the Tower Guards would've used and talked a little about when the peasants revolted and stormed the Tower (remarkably, the only time it had ever been breached). When I descended down into the inner courtyard, the first place I went was the House of Jewels, where the real Crown Jewels of England are kept. It was very tightly secured (as you can imagine). They don't allow photographs inside, but it was absolutely marvelous. Everything was sumptuous and brilliant (literally) and beautiful. I don't think I've even imagined of so many gems in one place at the same time. After I left there, I wandered around some more. I saw the place where Anne Bolyn and many others were beheaded. I saw the various graffiti on the walls where people had been kept prisoner. I had to search around a bit, but I eventually found the torture exhibit (ironically not in the Bloody Tower), which turned out to just be a Scavenger's Daughter, a Rack, and a set of Manacles. It was still pretty cool, though, and considering how many kids were around, I thought it was really tastefully done.
The thing that I got really excited about, though, and the thing I was not leaving the Tower without seeing, were the ravens. It is said that if the Tower Ravens ever leave the Tower, then England will fall. So, they keep the requisite six around, plus a seventh, just in case. They do clip the birds' wings, though, so there's no real chance of them just flying away. They also have a little caged enclosure where three of them were hanging out. I saw one sitting on a wall first, quite a bit away from the cages. He was watching people go by and talking to them and making noises and I took a bunch of pictures. Then I went over by the cages, where there were three enclosed and three more just walking around outside. I took a bunch more pictures; ravens are really very photogenic birds. When I counted later, I ended up with 25 pictures of just those seven birds.
I ended up spending over three hours in the Tower of London, and enjoyed every minute. Eventually, though, I did manage to see it all, and so I headed back to the Tube. It was raining really hard by then, and all the walking around meant that my feet and the bottoms of my pants were getting really wet. I had some more problems with the Tube when I tried to get to Mansion House, which the internet had told me was about a ten minute walk from Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. I found Mansion House alright, but then had more problems trying to figure out how to get to the Globe itself. There was construction in the middle of the roads, so I walked up and down and around and crossed the streets where there were no lights (a very dangerous thing in London). Every once in a while I came across a map that pointed the way to the river, and eventually I got to the bank.
From the bank, I could actually see the Globe, finally; and I could see the footbridge that would let me get to it. At that point, it was just a matter of getting to the bridge and crossing. I also passed St. Paul's Cathedral, which is on the opposite side of Millennium Bridge from the Globe, and I decided I'd have to take pictures after.
The Globe itself was pretty cool; I didn't know much about the actual building, so I learned a lot. I bought my ticket and just glanced briefly at the exhibits before my tour started. The guy took us inside the theatre itself, sat us in the seats, and talked to us for a while. I really got the impression from him that the only way to fully experience the Globe is to see a performance there. I was kind of sad, since by the time they're doing shows I'll be going back home, so even if I wanted to come back I wouldn't be able to. He told us that the Globe itself is a reconstruction, not built even on the exact site of the old one (which is now apparently covered by a pub). It's an educated guess of what the building would've looked like, based on what we know of the two sister theatres, the Rose and the Swan. It is also the third Globe; the first one was burned down in a fire during a performance, when they shot off a cannon (sans cannonball) and a piece of cloth from the explosion set the thatched roof on fire. Fortunately, no-one was hurt, and the worst casualty was a bottle of beer that a man used to douse his pants when they had caught on fire. It was rebuilt, and still very successful, until the Puritans took over London and it was shut down by Parliament. For all that it is mostly educated guesswork, they took great pains to make it as true to the spirit of the original as possible. It is the first fully wooden building with a thatched roof since the Great Fire of London, and was made using techniques and materials from Shakespeare's time. After the tour, I wandered through some more and saw the exhibits, which included live demonstrations of woodworking, stage combat, and Elizabethan costuming.
When I left the Globe, I went back across the Millennium Bridge to St. Paul's Cathedral. I didn't go inside, mostly because I didn't want to spend the money, but I did take a lot of pictures of the outside and some cool stuff around it. Then I realised that I didn't actually have pictures of Wyndham's Theatre, where I'd seen "An Inspector Calls," so I went back there, took the pictures, and headed home. It was about then (well on to 4 or 5 pm) that I realised I hadn't eaten all day apart from the sandwich at the Tower. So when I got to Totteridge and Whetstone (the Tube station closest to Katie's house) I decided to go to a grocery store and buy some dinner. I also stopped by a flower stall and got them a bunch of tulips as a thank-you for letting me stay this week.
When I left the grocery store, however, the fairly constant rain had turned into a veritable downpour. I fought my way through the flood to get back, and was very happy to change my wet shoes, socks, and pants and warm up again. Katie and Allan were there, so I talked with them for a while and then they went to dinner and I stayed and ate the one I had just bought. While they were gone, Grant called. He had accidentally left his passport in their scanner when he made copies for his hostel stay, and needed to come back out to grab it. Right when he got out here, Katie and Allan returned as well, so we talked for a while.
The rest of my evening has been spent relaxing and catching up on the internet, which I have not really had time to check the past couple of days. Now, I am off to bed once more. Tomorrow: Westminster, Buckingham Palace, and hopefully the Changing of the Guard!
Showing posts with label theatre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theatre. Show all posts
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
European Public Transit Has Earned My Love Forever
Today, I finally started my adventure in London! Yesterday was spent in a rush of finalising plans, information, tickets, packing, etc, and then this morning Grant and I woke up bright and early so that we could leave the house by 6:30am. We had to walk down to the Gare (the train station), and our train was leaving at 7:06am.
We ended up being about 15 minutes early, and found the train easily enough. When we got on and sat down at first, though, the lights were out in the car. It was kind of creepy and weird, so Grant checked it out and we moved down to a different car. That one had little eight-seat compartments rather than the usual seats, so the two of us took a car together, put up the arm rests, and mostly slept on our way to Orléans. It was kind of funny; at one point when we were both almost asleep and the train was going decently fast, a TVG passed us going the opposite direction and it sounded like a dragon howling past right by our heads! Grant screamed, and we both bolted straight up! We were a little confused about what the train was doing when we sat in Orléans for a long time, and a couple of women joined us in our car since the train was filling up more. Getting to Paris was pretty uneventful, except that we were about 12 minutes late; which is unheard of in the French train systems.
Once in Gare Austerlitz in Paris, we found the Métro to take us to Gare du Nord, where we were going to catch the Eurostar. We were briefly above ground, and managed to see the tops of the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, but that was the extent of our Parisian experience. I'm really going to have to go back; I missed it even just from the Métro itself.
The Gare itself wasn't that hard to navigate, although I hadn't really thought about the security necessary since we were going to another country. We had to fill out a card for non-UK residents. Then we got our passports stamped by the French border patrol (my first passport stamp with a train on it!) and had to talk to the British border patrol about 5 feet further on. The X-ray and stuff was ridiculously simple, and then we were through to the boarding lobby. Grant had had some kind of mix-up with his ticket and was scheduled to be on the 12:13 train rather than the 11:13 with me, but we talked to the desk and they got him on the earlier train, although not in the same car. I was in Carriage 1, the very first on the train. There were a couple of French girls sitting beside and across from me, a British girl across diagonally, and there was a Spanish couple with their two young boys across the aisle. The father was cute; he kept trying to mind the two boys, calling them "mi amor" and stuff.
The Eurostar was pretty nice, as trains go. Grant and I both realised that when we didn't know whether we'd crossed the Channel yet all we had to do was see which way people were driving on the freeways. I was expecting the Chunnel to be more of a big deal, but it was basically just a long black tunnel; I honestly didn't even notice we were through until I looked up from my book and everything was grey and misty and *so* typically obviously England. The Eurostar was also about 15 minutes late (we had bad luck, I guess), but we still managed to get out of the St. Pancras station, cross over and find King's Cross, and meet up with my Aunt Roxanne's friend Katie in front of the appointed Burger King. Grant and I both got some British pounds from the ATM, got some lunch (mmm, traditional pasty with beef and potatoes and onions...), and went with Katie to the Underground.
Katie is American, but her new husband Allan is from Scotland and works in the Royal Air Force, so she moved to London after their wedding. She very graciously agreed to let me and Grant spend a few days with her during our vacation, and she seems to be purely adorable and sweet. I went ahead and bought a 7-day pass for the Underground, since I'm planning to ride it everywhere the whole few days I'm here, and it's just simpler. Katie showed us how to take the Northern Line (which is actually one of the more confusing, since it splits and meets up and splits again) up to her house. It's an adorable little two-bedroom apartment (I'm sleeping in the guest bedroom and Grant agreed to take the air mattress in the living room) where there's apparently mixed civilian and military housing. We also got to meet Mazzie, who is Katie's wiener-dog mutt. I'll have to take pictures of her before I leave, because she is adorable.
After dropping off our luggage and settling in a bit (and I changed, because it was pouring down rain and I was soaked), the two of us headed off on our own again to see a little bit of the city. We went to Embankment, which is right on the bank of the Thames, and took brief little pictures of the London Eye and Big Ben. The main reason I wanted to go was to see Cleopatra's Needle, which is an Egyptian obelisk that was taken from Egypt when the British defeated Napoleon and now sits in the center of London. We took a couple pictures, but it was very cold and rainy, so we quickly headed back down into the Tube. We went up to the theatre district, near Leicester Square. On Monday we'd decided that it would be fun to see a show, but before it began we walked around a bit. It was amazing to see all the lights and posters for all the various shows that are playing: Lion King, Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, Les Misérables, Billy Elliot, and a hundred others.
For dinner we decided on a little Italian restaurant. It was really small and close, but cute. Grant got a pizza, and I had Penne Marco Polo, which was penne pasta with duck and mushrooms in a plum sauce. It was really, really good, and really sweet, which was interesting. I also tried something called Fruitisa, which was some sparkling pomegrante juice, and that was okay. What absolutely made the restaurant, though, was the dessert. We split a piece of cheesecake with red berries and sauce on top, and it was absolutely the lightest, sweetest, most heavenly piece of cheesecake I have ever tasted; and the berries were sweet and tart and added just the right touch of flavour.
After dinner, we headed back towards the Wyndham's Theatre, which was where our show was. The website had said that you come out of the Tube station and the theatre was right there, and they weren't lying; you could basically walk 5 steps from the station awning to the theatre awning without even getting wet! The show we went to see was called "An Inspector Calls," and is a British play about a well-off British family whose dinner party is interrupted by a strange Inspector Goole, who shows up and starts asking questions in regard to the suicide of a working-class girl, Eva Smith. We had considered going to something more well-known, but a friend of mine who's in theatre told me that the best thing to do in London was to see British theatre, rather than a show that you could see any time back in the States. It definitely paid off, too! The theatre itself was obviously a little old (there was a renovation fee included in our ticket price), but it was elegant and the seating was perfect. We were in the very last row in the very top balcony, but we could see and hear everything just fine.
The show itself is extremely different. It kind of plays tricks with your mind, and you're not really sure what to believe at certain points. They had magnificent effects, though; the stage was built so that half of it was this huge mechanised cutaway house, which could open up so that you could see the inside, and had a staircase that moved up to lock in place and connect it with the rest of the stage. At one specific part in the play, they used pyrotechnic explosions and the mechanics made the house fall down, and it was really startling and a little terrifying for a second. The plot is really twisty, and it's definitely not what you might expect it to be. I left at first going "what the...?" and it wasn't until I'd really thought it over a bit more that I decided I actually liked it quite a lot. The actors were fantastic (in my, admittedly very limited theatrical opinion), especially the Inspector himself.
After the show, Grant and I took the train back to Katie's house, where we got to meet Allan for the first time. We sat up and talked for a while, and then they told me how to use the internet here. Now, I need to go to bed. Tomorrow we have even more things planned, and I need to get some sleep!
We ended up being about 15 minutes early, and found the train easily enough. When we got on and sat down at first, though, the lights were out in the car. It was kind of creepy and weird, so Grant checked it out and we moved down to a different car. That one had little eight-seat compartments rather than the usual seats, so the two of us took a car together, put up the arm rests, and mostly slept on our way to Orléans. It was kind of funny; at one point when we were both almost asleep and the train was going decently fast, a TVG passed us going the opposite direction and it sounded like a dragon howling past right by our heads! Grant screamed, and we both bolted straight up! We were a little confused about what the train was doing when we sat in Orléans for a long time, and a couple of women joined us in our car since the train was filling up more. Getting to Paris was pretty uneventful, except that we were about 12 minutes late; which is unheard of in the French train systems.
Once in Gare Austerlitz in Paris, we found the Métro to take us to Gare du Nord, where we were going to catch the Eurostar. We were briefly above ground, and managed to see the tops of the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, but that was the extent of our Parisian experience. I'm really going to have to go back; I missed it even just from the Métro itself.
The Gare itself wasn't that hard to navigate, although I hadn't really thought about the security necessary since we were going to another country. We had to fill out a card for non-UK residents. Then we got our passports stamped by the French border patrol (my first passport stamp with a train on it!) and had to talk to the British border patrol about 5 feet further on. The X-ray and stuff was ridiculously simple, and then we were through to the boarding lobby. Grant had had some kind of mix-up with his ticket and was scheduled to be on the 12:13 train rather than the 11:13 with me, but we talked to the desk and they got him on the earlier train, although not in the same car. I was in Carriage 1, the very first on the train. There were a couple of French girls sitting beside and across from me, a British girl across diagonally, and there was a Spanish couple with their two young boys across the aisle. The father was cute; he kept trying to mind the two boys, calling them "mi amor" and stuff.
The Eurostar was pretty nice, as trains go. Grant and I both realised that when we didn't know whether we'd crossed the Channel yet all we had to do was see which way people were driving on the freeways. I was expecting the Chunnel to be more of a big deal, but it was basically just a long black tunnel; I honestly didn't even notice we were through until I looked up from my book and everything was grey and misty and *so* typically obviously England. The Eurostar was also about 15 minutes late (we had bad luck, I guess), but we still managed to get out of the St. Pancras station, cross over and find King's Cross, and meet up with my Aunt Roxanne's friend Katie in front of the appointed Burger King. Grant and I both got some British pounds from the ATM, got some lunch (mmm, traditional pasty with beef and potatoes and onions...), and went with Katie to the Underground.
Katie is American, but her new husband Allan is from Scotland and works in the Royal Air Force, so she moved to London after their wedding. She very graciously agreed to let me and Grant spend a few days with her during our vacation, and she seems to be purely adorable and sweet. I went ahead and bought a 7-day pass for the Underground, since I'm planning to ride it everywhere the whole few days I'm here, and it's just simpler. Katie showed us how to take the Northern Line (which is actually one of the more confusing, since it splits and meets up and splits again) up to her house. It's an adorable little two-bedroom apartment (I'm sleeping in the guest bedroom and Grant agreed to take the air mattress in the living room) where there's apparently mixed civilian and military housing. We also got to meet Mazzie, who is Katie's wiener-dog mutt. I'll have to take pictures of her before I leave, because she is adorable.
After dropping off our luggage and settling in a bit (and I changed, because it was pouring down rain and I was soaked), the two of us headed off on our own again to see a little bit of the city. We went to Embankment, which is right on the bank of the Thames, and took brief little pictures of the London Eye and Big Ben. The main reason I wanted to go was to see Cleopatra's Needle, which is an Egyptian obelisk that was taken from Egypt when the British defeated Napoleon and now sits in the center of London. We took a couple pictures, but it was very cold and rainy, so we quickly headed back down into the Tube. We went up to the theatre district, near Leicester Square. On Monday we'd decided that it would be fun to see a show, but before it began we walked around a bit. It was amazing to see all the lights and posters for all the various shows that are playing: Lion King, Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, Les Misérables, Billy Elliot, and a hundred others.
For dinner we decided on a little Italian restaurant. It was really small and close, but cute. Grant got a pizza, and I had Penne Marco Polo, which was penne pasta with duck and mushrooms in a plum sauce. It was really, really good, and really sweet, which was interesting. I also tried something called Fruitisa, which was some sparkling pomegrante juice, and that was okay. What absolutely made the restaurant, though, was the dessert. We split a piece of cheesecake with red berries and sauce on top, and it was absolutely the lightest, sweetest, most heavenly piece of cheesecake I have ever tasted; and the berries were sweet and tart and added just the right touch of flavour.
After dinner, we headed back towards the Wyndham's Theatre, which was where our show was. The website had said that you come out of the Tube station and the theatre was right there, and they weren't lying; you could basically walk 5 steps from the station awning to the theatre awning without even getting wet! The show we went to see was called "An Inspector Calls," and is a British play about a well-off British family whose dinner party is interrupted by a strange Inspector Goole, who shows up and starts asking questions in regard to the suicide of a working-class girl, Eva Smith. We had considered going to something more well-known, but a friend of mine who's in theatre told me that the best thing to do in London was to see British theatre, rather than a show that you could see any time back in the States. It definitely paid off, too! The theatre itself was obviously a little old (there was a renovation fee included in our ticket price), but it was elegant and the seating was perfect. We were in the very last row in the very top balcony, but we could see and hear everything just fine.
The show itself is extremely different. It kind of plays tricks with your mind, and you're not really sure what to believe at certain points. They had magnificent effects, though; the stage was built so that half of it was this huge mechanised cutaway house, which could open up so that you could see the inside, and had a staircase that moved up to lock in place and connect it with the rest of the stage. At one specific part in the play, they used pyrotechnic explosions and the mechanics made the house fall down, and it was really startling and a little terrifying for a second. The plot is really twisty, and it's definitely not what you might expect it to be. I left at first going "what the...?" and it wasn't until I'd really thought it over a bit more that I decided I actually liked it quite a lot. The actors were fantastic (in my, admittedly very limited theatrical opinion), especially the Inspector himself.
After the show, Grant and I took the train back to Katie's house, where we got to meet Allan for the first time. We sat up and talked for a while, and then they told me how to use the internet here. Now, I need to go to bed. Tomorrow we have even more things planned, and I need to get some sleep!
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