London Day 6
(This is a part of a 7-day series about my trip to London.)
Date: February 16, 2008
I'm on my second last day here in London, so I won't spend time to write a report on today right now -- I'll save that for when I'm in the airport tomorrow...
Here are some snippets:
- free concert hall
- waiting in line
- missed theatre dilemna
- food that is hard to eat
- a good night's rest
---
Date: Feburary 18, 2008
So my 6th day in London isn't nearly as fresh on my mind any more. It would be interesting to try to figure this out from an hourly perspective given all the time zone changes and stuff, but suffice to say, it's a hazy mess now. It's a good thing I put down an outline. That always helps.
It was a bright, clear day out, but very windy and very cold as the day before. I knew it was my last day in London, so I wanted to make sure I got in time to enjoy the last few hours of my stay, and to see things I hadn't seen before. Each day in London, I kind of started the day near Trafalgar Square, Embankment and Leicester Square, because it was, as far as I could tell, the center of all things London. Lots of the theatres were centered around the area, it had lots of museums nearby, and of course, the place where I bought internet access from was nearby. ;-) As a consequence, I actually spent a lot of time killing time in the area, going to the National Gallery even for brief trips if I had to kill an hour or two. As you can imagine, it wasn't hard to find something interesting to look at inside!
My main goal for the day was to see the show with Jeff Goldblum and Kevin Spacey (pretty famous actors). I figured this should be a pretty manageable goal since I had nothing else to do. The thing I didn't figure into this equation was that it was a Saturday, and that I really should have considered how busy a weekend might be. The streets, which were already pretty busy on the regular weekday, were COMPLETELY PACKED. It was like nothing I've ever seen before in my life. Imagine the Richmond Night Market, but that rather than having all that human traffic focused in a small area that it was ALL OVER THE PLACE. Quite frankly, it was suffocating. It was so bad that I didn't actually want to go to try to get tickets, but I buckled down and headed to the ticket booths in Leicester square.
HOLY COW. The lines were waaay too long. None of them even said anything about the show either, which made me anxious: what if I waited in line, but when I got to the front was laughed out of the booth because they didn't sell tickets to that particular show?! I checked the time: I had two hours before the show. With that, I decided to walk to the theatre to get the ticket.
The walk was a pretty long one (a bit longer than I expected), but I did walk through Waterloo station, which is cool because it's featured in Bourne Ultimatum (a recent movie). I actually recognized large parts of it (given I'd just seen the movie), which was a plus -- I would have been pretty annoyed if I didn't recognize anything while being there physically.
When I got to the theatre, it turned out that the show was already sold out. I had to wait in "Refunds" line, which is the theatre's way of scamming even more money out of people: basically, if you can't make it to the show, you can return the ticket(s), but get charged some sort of fee. The theatre then turns and walks to the front of the theatre where they can sell it for full price to the rest of us chumps. Highly lame, but no one in our lineup was complaining! We all wanted in! Unfortunately, waiting for an hour didn't help -- the show started, and I didn't get in. Heck, I was still eighth in line when the show started. The line had shrunk by about four people or so while I was there. Moral of the story: buy tickets to theatre shows in advance -- especially if you plan on going on a Saturday. The real kicker of the story is that I actually had a chance to buy the tickets on Thursday (I'd checked in to see if any were available), but at the time I didn't buy them. I'm not even really sure why, which is what is so infuriating.
I spent some time at a random music hall (which was on the way back by foot). I sat there collecting my thoughts and writing some notes that had occurred to me over the past few days. While I was there, some random free concert started up! It was a piano recital of sorts, and the music wasn't very good, but while I was there, I was impressed with the space: a very large open area that was clearly free for everyone to be in, and to enjoy. Further, a free concert. How about that?
Heading into the evening, I figured I'd go back to the hostel and get a good night's rest. I knew the flight back (the next day) would be long, plus the flight didn't even start until 5pm, so it was going to be a long long day. While I wasn't particularly hungry, I decided that I should get some food. I hit up a Chinese street vendor (the only one I'd spotted the whole time I was there) that sold chinese buns and chinese donuts (long sticks of fried dough). While I was quite pleased with myself, the chinese donut turned out to be rather terrible. There's a saying in Cantonese that you use when food is really gross: "lahn sick." Literally, this translates "difficult to eat" or "hard to eat". And, quite literally, that described my experience with the chinese doughnut: rather than being crispy and soft, it was hard as a rock. Hard to eat.
I hit the sack early, trying to watch a bit of "When They Were Kings" before I fell asleep. I knew it was time to go to sleep when I kept drowsing off during the more boring bits. Jetlag finally caught up with me.
Date: February 16, 2008
I'm on my second last day here in London, so I won't spend time to write a report on today right now -- I'll save that for when I'm in the airport tomorrow...
Here are some snippets:
- free concert hall
- waiting in line
- missed theatre dilemna
- food that is hard to eat
- a good night's rest
---
Date: Feburary 18, 2008
So my 6th day in London isn't nearly as fresh on my mind any more. It would be interesting to try to figure this out from an hourly perspective given all the time zone changes and stuff, but suffice to say, it's a hazy mess now. It's a good thing I put down an outline. That always helps.
It was a bright, clear day out, but very windy and very cold as the day before. I knew it was my last day in London, so I wanted to make sure I got in time to enjoy the last few hours of my stay, and to see things I hadn't seen before. Each day in London, I kind of started the day near Trafalgar Square, Embankment and Leicester Square, because it was, as far as I could tell, the center of all things London. Lots of the theatres were centered around the area, it had lots of museums nearby, and of course, the place where I bought internet access from was nearby. ;-) As a consequence, I actually spent a lot of time killing time in the area, going to the National Gallery even for brief trips if I had to kill an hour or two. As you can imagine, it wasn't hard to find something interesting to look at inside!
My main goal for the day was to see the show with Jeff Goldblum and Kevin Spacey (pretty famous actors). I figured this should be a pretty manageable goal since I had nothing else to do. The thing I didn't figure into this equation was that it was a Saturday, and that I really should have considered how busy a weekend might be. The streets, which were already pretty busy on the regular weekday, were COMPLETELY PACKED. It was like nothing I've ever seen before in my life. Imagine the Richmond Night Market, but that rather than having all that human traffic focused in a small area that it was ALL OVER THE PLACE. Quite frankly, it was suffocating. It was so bad that I didn't actually want to go to try to get tickets, but I buckled down and headed to the ticket booths in Leicester square.
HOLY COW. The lines were waaay too long. None of them even said anything about the show either, which made me anxious: what if I waited in line, but when I got to the front was laughed out of the booth because they didn't sell tickets to that particular show?! I checked the time: I had two hours before the show. With that, I decided to walk to the theatre to get the ticket.
The walk was a pretty long one (a bit longer than I expected), but I did walk through Waterloo station, which is cool because it's featured in Bourne Ultimatum (a recent movie). I actually recognized large parts of it (given I'd just seen the movie), which was a plus -- I would have been pretty annoyed if I didn't recognize anything while being there physically.
When I got to the theatre, it turned out that the show was already sold out. I had to wait in "Refunds" line, which is the theatre's way of scamming even more money out of people: basically, if you can't make it to the show, you can return the ticket(s), but get charged some sort of fee. The theatre then turns and walks to the front of the theatre where they can sell it for full price to the rest of us chumps. Highly lame, but no one in our lineup was complaining! We all wanted in! Unfortunately, waiting for an hour didn't help -- the show started, and I didn't get in. Heck, I was still eighth in line when the show started. The line had shrunk by about four people or so while I was there. Moral of the story: buy tickets to theatre shows in advance -- especially if you plan on going on a Saturday. The real kicker of the story is that I actually had a chance to buy the tickets on Thursday (I'd checked in to see if any were available), but at the time I didn't buy them. I'm not even really sure why, which is what is so infuriating.
I spent some time at a random music hall (which was on the way back by foot). I sat there collecting my thoughts and writing some notes that had occurred to me over the past few days. While I was there, some random free concert started up! It was a piano recital of sorts, and the music wasn't very good, but while I was there, I was impressed with the space: a very large open area that was clearly free for everyone to be in, and to enjoy. Further, a free concert. How about that?
Heading into the evening, I figured I'd go back to the hostel and get a good night's rest. I knew the flight back (the next day) would be long, plus the flight didn't even start until 5pm, so it was going to be a long long day. While I wasn't particularly hungry, I decided that I should get some food. I hit up a Chinese street vendor (the only one I'd spotted the whole time I was there) that sold chinese buns and chinese donuts (long sticks of fried dough). While I was quite pleased with myself, the chinese donut turned out to be rather terrible. There's a saying in Cantonese that you use when food is really gross: "lahn sick." Literally, this translates "difficult to eat" or "hard to eat". And, quite literally, that described my experience with the chinese doughnut: rather than being crispy and soft, it was hard as a rock. Hard to eat.
I hit the sack early, trying to watch a bit of "When They Were Kings" before I fell asleep. I knew it was time to go to sleep when I kept drowsing off during the more boring bits. Jetlag finally caught up with me.
posted by tangaroo at 8:52 a.m.
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