Kids Look - It's Big Ben!

Wednesday 4 April 2012

We started our first full day in London the same way the locals do when on holiday - we had a lie-in. Very nice. After enjoying a tasty breakfast of chocolate (British) croissants, fruit, cheese, and weird cereal we tubed to Victoria. There we hopped on the hop-on hop-off bus. Seemed appropriate what with Easter coming, and it is what non-locals do when on holiday.

From the upper decker we were able to do drive by shootings of many of the required sights - Big Ben, Parliament, London Eye, various bridges, Twinning shop, that palace place, some big old church type building(s), and more. All were more or less as expected.

We hopped off and went to our 2nd pub of the trip which had the disappointingly bland name of "The Clarence". Luckily the decor was more interesting then the name. The food and beer were also quite good. I had the fish and chips if you care, and if you don't care you should have skipped this sentence.  Shelley had some kind of salad.

We then did some foot touring of the local sites including:

• Trafalgar Square (not a square)
• St. Martin In The Field (not in the field)
• Picadily Circus (nothing like a circus)

We continued our tour of bizzaro London at the half-price ticket place where we bought full price tickets for Wicked, which I'll talk about in a paragraph or two. We then went to another pub with a name more bland then Clarence: "The Crown", where Shelley and I got pints of something and the kids got brownies and ice cream that did not have ice cream and Ella's was actually a lime tart.

It was time to hop back on the tour bus, which toured for about 5 min before stopping for a 20 minute break. So, off we hopped and walked to King's Cross Station. The Harry Potter fans in the audience will recognize this as the home of Platform 9 3/4 where Harry and the crew board the Hogwarts Express. Turns out there is an actual Platform 9 3/4 which is the most understated tourist thing I've experienced in quite some time.

Instead of going to Hogwarts we went back to the flat for another round of British Baguette sandwiches, then off to the Apollo Victoria Theater for the show. Wicked was brilliant! Everything was so well done, especially once you learned to ignore the fact that they don't speak British in Oz. The woman who played the Wicked Witch of the West End did an especially good job. It was lucky that they could find such a talented singer and performer who also happened to be green. It's not easy.