Weekend of February 8-10: London

So last weekend I went to London for the first time. It started off a little rocky - Anna was not at the bus station when I got there, and I couldn't get her number to work, and then I asked a British woman how she thought the number was supposed to be dialed, and then I got it to work and long story short, Anna thought I was coming next weekend. So she ran (I think literally) down to the station and we both said sorry sorry sorry and had pub food, and made our plans for the next day, which were: wake up early and go see Othello at the Donmar Warehouse, which is starring Ewan McGregor and Chiwetel Ejiofor, and which is sold out for the entirety of its run, unless you get to the box office early in the morning and buy one of the ten available day-of seats, or one of the fifteen standing-room-only tickets.

It turned out that eight in the morning would not have been nearly early enough even if we hadn't gotten lost and wandered around the West End for two hours - by the time we got to the Donmar, it was 10:30, when the box office actually starts selling the tickets, and they sold out in ten minutes. So instead, we went down to the half-priced ticket stand in the middle of the West End, and we got tickets to see Spamalot, which starred Peter Davison, who played the fifth Doctor in Doctor Who. Needless to say, that was an absolutely wonderful, hilarious experience. I didn't know it beforehand, but my life was not complete until I saw Peter Davison getting down with his funky self dressed in chain mail.

After the failed Othello attempt and before Spamalot - seriously, so great, I would see it again instantly - Anna and I stopped in all the places that we had just taken pictures of while looking for the Donmar Warehouse, such as a stamp shop that sold, as far as we could see instead of stamps, a metric ton of Doctor Who memorabilia. This country is awesome. We also went in the National Gallery, which is a really beautiful area with fountains and white stone and statues, and we saw Rembrandts and da Vincis and Caravaggios and cool German stained glass etchings. I also saw a portrait of Sara Sidden, a famous Victorian-era Shakespearean actress whose home theatre was in Bath, right around the corner from my house, in what is now the Masonic Hall. (This is also where we've been having all our program-wide meetings. Very cool.)

On Saturday, having walked for almost the entire of Friday, we took it easy, eating at cool little places around Anna's school and shopping at a cheap, trendy London stores. (I got boots for 5 pounds! This was very exciting.) I made plans to come again next weekend - absolutely determined to see Othello - and on Sunday morning the bus whisked me back to Bath in a quick 3 hours. London was cool and everything, but oh, my city is so pretty. You can see the Abbey from anywhere at the edge of the city, so whenever I pull in, since I live more or less right there, I know exactly where my house is. It's a good feeling.