"A sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful attempt to put on to canvas what is in front of him, but one who tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing." - Giorgio Morandi
Today
was another rainy day. It was technically our last day of ‘freedom’ (since
tomorrow is our orientation meeting which means we will actually have to do
stuff after that, like get a bank account and a job) but the weather put a bit
of a damper on it. To begin, we went to Leicester Square to get some show
tickets for the night. There is a booth that sells discounted tickets called TKTS. I know it because they have it in
Times Square in New York City, as well. Fortunately, the line is much smaller
in London, and they open at 10:00am. We got there around 11:00am and, after a
short wait, got tickets to War Horse.
I’ve seen it twice at Lincoln Center in New York but never in London and Sarah
has never seen it period. Our tickets are in the tenth row and should have cost
us £62.50 but because we used TKTS they
only cost us £26. We had budgeted for £30 so we saved some money! Yay! If there
hadn’t been tickets to War Horse we
were going to look at Once and Wicked. Not all shows are available at
the booth. Some, like The Lion King,
you have to buy at the box office because they don’t need to sell discounted
tickets: everyone goes anyway.
After
getting our tickets we walked to Covent Garden so Sarah could finally try Shake
Shack! And it was delicious! It tastes just like it does in New York. We had
burgers, fries and milkshakes. If there was any reason to complain about Shake
Shack it’s that they don’t adjust the prices for being in pounds, so it’s a bit
pricey for fast food. Oh well. Totally worth it.
When we
finished our lunch we headed to Trafalgar Square. The original plan was to
visit the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, but we ended up
just visiting the latter. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.ork.uk) was the first attraction I
ever visited in London. I really like it. We spent almost two hours there. It’s
basically portraits from the last five hundred years. Sarah and I laughed at
all the self-portraits, because they are the original selfies. My favorite
gallery is actually the first gallery you see: The Tudor Gallery. It has
portraits of Henry VIII and most of his wives and his three children. I love
that period of English history so it’s really cool seeing their pictures. Sarah
had remarked earlier that it was too bad people didn’t do portraits anymore…and
then we found one of Kate Middleton. Oops. The last exhibit, which is always
changing, was on Vivien Leigh. I love Vivien Leigh so I definitely looked and
read every single thing in that room. I just love her so much.
As I
mentioned, our initial plan was to then visit the National Gallery, but we felt
a little too museumed out and wouldn’t appreciate the art enough. It’s free so
it’s not like we can’t go back another day. Originally I had thought if we
didn’t feel up to another museum we could use our Historic Royal Palaces
membership card to get into Banqueting House, located down the road, then
wander around Green Park and up to Buckingham Palace before grabbing some
supper and heading to War Horse, but
when we got out of the National Portrait Gallery it was raining and pretty
miserable out. We had six hours to kill so we ultimately decided to head back
to the flat. We had been saying for a few days that we wanted to organize our
suitcases better (instead of the panic packing gong-show they all currently
were) and we wouldn’t feel like it tonight, since we wouldn’t be back until
after 11:00pm. So we took the train back and did just that, while watching Gone With the Wind (inspired by the
Vivien Leigh exhibit, of course). Sarah’s never seen it before now. We couldn’t
get through the whole thing, of course, because that movie is four hours long
and we did not have that long, but we will finish it tomorrow.
After
some research, I decided the quickest way to the theater was by bus, and even
that was going to take an hour. Somehow we managed to get on and off at the
right stop. Yay us. We had an hour before the show so we stopped in at a pub
next door and had some chips and garlic cheese bread. Supper of champions right
there. It got freakishly busy at one point but then they all realized there was
an upstairs section and disappeared. Afterwards we headed to the show (well,
walked past it, technically). After buying some overpriced wine we went in to
sit down. We had row K, on the right hand side of the stage. The theater is an
almost semi-circle so there’s no actual bad seat. The show was great. There
were a few small changes from the New York performances I had seen, which was
interesting. The show originated in London (with Kit Harington aka Jon Snow as
the main character) so I guess they know best. One thing I didn’t like was that
they didn’t give out any programs. I’m so used to perusing through Playbills
when I see Broadway shows that I really noticed their absence. The show lasted
two hours and forty minutes and at the end you could hear everyone sniffling in
the audience and I guess the lady next to Sarah was absolutely freaking out and
her husband had to hold her down. I’m sad I missed that. All I got was some
American lady who thought clouds were smoke from an explosion.
After
the show we went to get the bus back…but the road only went one way. So we went
to look for a bus stop going in the right direction. We walked for a bit and
eventually realized we were walking over Waterloo Bridge. Oops. Fortunately, we
did find the bus in the end. After a bit of a wander. We didn’t get in until
around 11:30pm so there went our plans for being well-rested for our
orientation meeting tomorrow…
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