2024 England - April - London Trip - Day 01 - Museums and Theaters!

 April 18th - 20th, 2024

We start this one on the Isle of Guernsey.  Our alarm clocks were set for 4:30 AM to be up and ready to take a taxi to the airport to fly from Guernsey to London City Airport.  Unfortunately, I worked up at 2:30 AM and could not get back to sleep.  So I laid there just pondering life until it was time to get up.  Not much that you can do in a small hotel room.  Anyway, we got up, got ready and headed down to find the taxi waiting for us.  The driver was a very kind man.  He was a native, many generations back, from Guernsey.  His Aunt was sent to the UK (Wales) as a child during the invasion of Germany on the island.  She never came back and still lives in Wales.  Bottom line, Guernsey has a ton of WWII history there with the German occupation.

We arrived at the London City airport at 8:30 AM.  We were a bit delayed getting off the plane as the plane’s wheels/brakes started smoking or shedding something.  So they had the fire team come out and quickly check.  All good.  Once off the plane, we caught the DLR train to Stratford and then from there we caught the Central Underground train to Holborn station which was about 200 yards from our hotel, the Z Hotel - Holborn.  We’ve stayed at Z Hotels before.  The cheaper rooms are quite unique.  Very small, no windows and amazingly designed and clean.  We actually enjoy them as their service is top notch and we don’t need a big fancy room as we are never there except to sleep.  So it has always worked for us and this time was no exception.  We checked our bags, as our room was not ready, and headed out.

One thing I need to note, as we were flying and getting ready for the day, we checked our tickets for our plays that we were going to see.  It turned out that we bought 2 matinees…which was not going to work obviously.  So upon checking in our luggage, we headed to the theater where Frozen was playing ( and was very close to our hotel).  We went into the foyer and asked where the box office was.  They told us that it did not open until 1:30 PM.  That meant we had to call to see if we could move our tickets to the evening.  Well, as is the case, we got through and ended up in a telephone queue and we were #23.  Hmmm…it was going to be a while.  So, Denise stayed on the phone and we went and got some breakfast at a Pret Manger…which is a bakery on every corner in Europe.  We finally got through and for about £9 more per ticket, we could get a little better seating for the evening.  So we did that.  And the seats turned out to be pretty fantastic.  More on that in a bit.

After getting the ticket issue dealt with, we were closed to Trafalgar Square.  So we decided to go into the National Museum that sits on Trafalgar Square.  We spent a couple of hours there looking at lots of art and historical things.   The one thing about seeing all these museums is the amount of nakedness, especially in the 1500’s and 1600’s.  We went to multiple museums (Wallace Collection, National Museum,  Albert and Victoria Museum).  The only one with no nudes was the National Science museum…which I like the best.  That was pretty good.

Well, at this point, I’m going to summarize the three days into Theater.  We went to 4 plays.  2 on Thursday, 1 on Friday evening and 1 on Saturday afternoon.  On Thursday we saw Mousetrap in the afternoon and then Frozen in the evening.  Mousetrap is about to close this year.  Longest running play ever…72 years.  However, I was so tired and the English brogue was so tough to understand, that I was in and out of sleep pretty much through out the play.  In the end the….did it.  I won’t tell.  It’s an Agatha Christie murder\mystery.  Frozen was pretty darn good.  It was probably my favorite of the 4 plays.  The theater was newly remodeled and EXTREMELY comfortable.  It seemed like all seats had good vision of the characters and all the special effects.  The music (and the singers) were fantastic.  And of course the story is fun.  I hope our kids can take their kids someday to it.  On Friday, we went to Hadestown.  This is a fairly new play with kind of a Greek mythology base in modern times.  It has won a number off Tony awards.  The music (band and singers) were awesome.  I loved the trombonist.  He was amazing.  But they were all good.  If there was any cursing (other than hell), I did not catch it.  Anyway…good one to see.  On Saturday, we concluded with Phantom of the Opera.  We ad not seen Phantom since we lived in California over 20 years ago.  And we love the story and music of Phantom.  This version here in London did not let us down.  It was really nicely done.  As the play was winding down and the Phantom has the girl on the boat in the bowels of the theater, the boat heads of the stage and then the curtain comes flying down followed by an announcement saying there was some technical difficulty beyond their control.  We waited about 5 to 10 minutes and then the play started again.  We had never experienced that before.

We got out of Phantom around 5:30 PM.  We arrived back at our flat at 7:30 PM.  That was after walking a good 20 minutes back to the hotel, getting our bags, eating some cheese and bread at the hotel, walking to the Underground and catching 2 trains to Victoria Station.  There, buying 2 tickets to Lingfield, walking directly to the train and getting on with no stopping.  And then 45 minutes later, Dave Thackeray was at the Lingfield Railway station to bring us to our flat.  It worked out like clock work.  And our 2 week ‘holiday’ had basically come to an end.

It is going to be a bit different now that the Wallace’s have departed.  They like to go and do as we like to do.  Others here tend to be more reserved and fine dwelling in their flats after long days in the temple.  But we will see who is going to emerge as a couple wanting to go out and do.

Pictures:

The Frozen set.  It was pretty beautiful.  It was the largest stage and theater that we’ve been to in London.

As we approached the English Coast, we could see 7 Sisters which are some of the best white cliffs around.  They are better than the White Cliffs of Dover in my opinion.

Trafalgar Square from the steps of the National Museum.

I believe this is St James Piccadilly, a church where some of Denise’s ancestors were once buried.  Their remains have been removed and moved elsewhere.  They had no idea where they might be today.  But it was fun going here and being on the site where they once were.  There was also a very nice food court just outside the door here where we got some nice food for lunch.

Denise could not exist stopping and getting a snicker bar pastry here.  I must admit.  It was pretty darn good.  London is a foodies paradise.

I found a place to get a gelato and she ate her pastry.  We had time to kill between plays and things.  So we sat here and people watched and ate our treats.

This was the theater for Mousetrap.  We were on row A in the Grand Circle.  Sounds good…right.  Not so much.  You can see the gold railing down below…we had to look through that to see the play the whole night.  And this theater was not designed for guys with long legs!

Sitting and waiting for our friends, Steve and Heather Turner, to arrive at the Wallace Collection.  This museum\house was interesting.  They had collections of porcelain, armor and of course paintings.  Lots of nudes in their collection.  The armor collection, to me, was the most amazing.  You’ll see a few photos of that below.

Now, I don’t recall which museum I saw this painting in.  But it was my favorite of the day.  Kid pulling this guys mustache and I’m not sure what he’s doing or about to do with his hand.  I liked it.

That’s a dragon fruit I think.  Odd looking thing.  He cut it open for us to see inside.  This was taken at Boroughs market.  We love going there.  It’s amazing.

I believe this was a statue portion of the Albert and Victoria National Museum.  We did not spent much time in this one.  We were kind of burnt out on the old stuff.  So we went over to the National Science one and loved it.

I didn’t mention that we took a Harry Potter walking tour on Saturday before The Phantom of the Opera play.  It was fun…a nice walk.  Not sure I trust all the info given.  But nonetheless, we saw interesting parts of London.  This is Leicester Square in London where movie premiers are held.  Around the square there are many bronze statues of famous actors and characters.  This is Mary Poppins if you cannot tell.

I believe this is looking down a street towards Piccadilly Square that is all lit up for the EID celebration that was going on in London and in this area.  EID celebrates the end of the long Muslim fast that has gone on for a month or so.

You see so many American businesses over here.  I put this in for my brother, Fred, who I know enjoys Wing Stop.

Trafalgar Square was the central set up for the EID celebration on Saturday.  Lots of dancing, singing and so on.  We sat there and watched people and listened to the entertainment or a good 45 minutes.

This lady definitely had the best outfit on the square there.