London Bridge is Falling Down!

I feel like I've spent an obscene amount of my time in Britain trying to escape London. "What's this!" You may say, "But Susan, London is historically one of the most brilliant cities in the world!" To them I say, yeah yeah yeah! Tell me about it...

It's nice, and after our most recent day out I'm no longer liable to say the London is evvviiil! You see, my first experience in London was my first day in Britain where I got to wait over two and a half hours for the coach that would take me to Leicester... for three in the morning. I wasn't impressed, but didn't blame London for that. My second experience in London was the one where my toes turned blue... fantastic. My third experience involved a tragidy involving the Ely train station and Beth and I being forced to stay in London TILL THE 5AM/8AM LEICESTER TRAIN CAME IN. Long story, one on its own, I won't go into it... gr. Needless to say, I was unimpressed with London. So, it's no wonder when I told Beth that it was up to her to pick our second to last outing and she chose LONDON that I cringed and muttered under my breath. That city's not been good to me.

But I went, because Beth really wanted to go to theatre in London--she later told me that the only travel related regret she would have had if we hadn't done this, would have been... that we hadn't done it--so we went and I didn't complain, though clearly I was very cautious. Beth made sure she had a variety of clearly written out ways home by the train, exact times and everything. We had a lovely illustrated map of London, also produced by Beth, and we had our lunches packed. We were so ready.

And it wasn't a disaster!

First things first was a mad dash to Leicester Sqare so as to get in line for theatre tickets at discount. We did this and made friends with some lovely queer men from Cork Ireland. They were very excited over Bethany's Irish heritage and even more excited over the fact that we were from Vancouver, because "Vancouver is just lovely!"

We were happy with getting tickets for Avenue Q, Wicked, Chicago, or The Lion King. Any of those four would be good. Well, our little friends wanted to see Avenue Q, and then they later realised that they would be happy with a show that--when translated--is called "The Birdcage" it's based on a Robyn William's movie that is very good. We went up to the ticket people and paid exactly what we were hoping to for our tickets, not the best seats we're told, but whatever, we'll cope!

The little men were directly after us, I guess we got the last two tickets because they had to go to Birdcage, but then, they wanted the evening show so, *shrugs*, we did nothing!

After our tickets we wandered the square a bit, noticing a priceless sign warning us that "criminals operate in this area" which I got pictures of. We did a section of London that I hadn't seen, going to such places as the TATE Modern Art museum which I'm now in love with. The Globe theatre is right beside that, and after seeing these two biggies we walked across the Millenium bridge to go see Saint Paul's. We got day passes for the tube, which was handy, so travelling about a bit wasn't a hassle really.

We did end up back at Leicester Square again, as that's around where our theatre was located. Once we found it (using a rediculous route, though neither of us knew that) we noticed that it was right next to a British Pub, so stopped in there for dinner. This was a rather large accomplishment for us as thus far we've only eaten at British Irish pubs! Yes Irish pubs in Britain, we're so bad. This pub was quite nice I had steak and ale pie, to be all British and stuff, and Beth had chicken kiev (she says that she was going to get fish and chips but this dish just sounded too yummy, I maintain my eye roll).

We were going to have apple pie, but felt that we'd rather get settled into our seats in the theatre as, this pub was super slow, so we paid and left--not letting the London time crisis get the better of us.

Avenue Q was amazing... no joke. Sure the Noel Coward theatre isn't the best known, DON'T CARE. I feel like Avenue Q was designed with my joy in mind. Muppets, silly dancing, songs like "What do you do with an English degree," "If you were Gay," and "The internet was made for porn!" as well as a very stimulating stage design and charming actors... I'm good to go. Beth and I were helplessly giggling throughout this entire play, more so when the "Bad Idea Bears" were on stage--famous for the line "More drinks more fun YAAAAY!"

To quote Bethany, "The bad idea bears are not fictional... nope."

We went home straight after this, but not before running into a mob of feminists protesting for violence against women to end. This insighted some truly... enlightened... mysoginist comments from the gentlemen leaving the tube station. Yes, most of them. Oh and when I say mob I mean it, couldn't see their beginning or end, they took up and entire street!

Sure, it was windy and full of angry feminists (I like my feminists happy and reasonable) but London didn't do me wrong this time. The train home was relaxed if not a little tiresome. Both Beth and I got home and happily drifted off at a reasonable time: home safe, sound, and un-traumatised.