When we came to big ben and the house of parliament we took a ridiculous amount of pictures before walking across the street to Westminster abbey. We contemplated going to a service so we could go in without paying…but there were too many other things to do. So we settled for visiting the gift shop where there were lots of neat books to look at with pictures of royalty. There’s still a bunch of stuff from the royal wedding and then this year is the queen’s diamond jubilee so there’s a ton of souvenir stuff to commemorate that as well.
Eventually though we did move on to Trafalgar square. However there was some big event going on there so we didn’t really visit it exactly, just kind of saw it from a distance. And so we headed toward the next stop – King’s Cross Station! I was so excited to visit platform 9 ¾ however lame it might be. I know it’s just a brick wall with the name of the platform above it and a trolley looking like it’s gone part way through the wall. But I think it’s really cool and it was basically a life goal accomplished. I guess you would have to be a harry potter fan to understand.
We got lunch near the station and then it was on to London bridge. We walked around for awhile before finding the tower bridge which is the thing that’s actually worth seeing. There was also this group of Spanish kids hanging around there and singing and dancing to this Portuguese, maybe Brazilian, song that’s really popular right now. It made me miss sevilla a bit. I really like that we’ve been consistently hearing bits of Spanish here and there in all of the places we’ve visited so far.
After viewing the bridge it was time to head back to the hotel to get ready for the big event of the day – Les Mis!!!! I was soooo excited. And I was not disappointed. We took the metro to london’s west end, the theatre district. We found the theatre and it was so cool to see it down the street with the big show poster and scrolling message about it being the 27th year it’s running, the longest running show ever. We got our tickets no problem and our seats were pretty good. It wasn’t a huge theatre and it wasn’t a huge cast but they still did a really excellent job. I how the turntable in the floor in the center of the stage is used. And the girl that played eponine was by far my favorite member of the cast. She had such a powerful voice and it didn’t surprise me at all that one of her credits was elphaba in wicked because I could hear her singing defying gravity in my head. I wish I could hear her sing it for real. Valjean was also very good, I really liked him a lot and fantine was great as well. We saw an understudy playing cosette but she was pretty good I thought. I don’t know how I felt about javert, it was kind of off and on depending on the song. I do wish the guy playing marius had had a bit stronger of a voice. But the guy that plays marius’s friend, the name I can’t pronounce that starts with an E… he had a really good voice and he had also been in wicked as fiyero which I can totally see. And the little boy that played gavroche was just adorable. He was so funny, it was great. Set wise, I like how they did Javert’s suicide scene and also the scene where valjean is bringing marius back from the barricade through the sewer. Overall it was a very good performance and I enjoyed it immensely. But sadly it had to come to an end and we returned to the hotel to rest up for our last day in London.
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