Tuesday, October 29 was my last official day to work at Crate and Barrel. My partner Bill and I had decided that I would retire at this point. So to celebrate, we decided to take a five day trip to London, since Bill had to travel on to Kenya for work. It had been 2 years since I was last there, and I was really itching for a London fix. We flew on Delta and arrived on Weds. morning. We were staying at a boutique hotel called Park Place on the river opposite the lower end of the Parliament buildings in London. It was a little difficult in traveling back and forth from the hotel because of its location near the Vauxhall station, but we managed to get back and forth to Leiscester Square without too much trouble. This was an interesting area because one of the elevated rail lines were right behind us. They had taken the curved sections underneath the railroad bridges and made restaurants and shops out of them. There were also some afterhours clubs also. It was somewhat disconcerting to walk past these clubs at 10 am in the morning and still see a line of young folks waiting to get into the clubs.
While in London, we saw 2 plays, 1 musical, and 1 movie. The two plays were excellent, "The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui" which starred Henry Goodman at the Duchess Theatre. It was a wonderful production of the Bertoldt Brecht play. It's had to believe that this was the same Henry Goodman who was fired as the replacement to Nathan Lane in the American musical "The Producers" on Broadway. He was exceptional in the lead role. The second play we saw had moved to the West End from the National Theatre and it was called "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time." All in all a brilliantly acted play with a great set design. I'm sure that an American theatre will bring this to New York. The musical we saw was "The Bodyguard" from the Whitney Houston movie. I enjoyed the show very much, but would have loved to seen Heather Headley who played the role when it opened last year. We were at a matinee so we saw the understudy in the lead role and not Beverley Knight who is advertised in the lead. It'll be interesting to see if this comes to New York in the near future.
The movie we saw had not opened in New York yet, but did open last weekend and captured the box office crown. It was "Ender's Game," a sci fi flick with Harrison Ford, Asa Butterfield, and Viola Davis. I enjoyed the film a lot, but it was not until I got back to New York that I heard the controversy involving the author of the book and his tirades against gay marriage. It was interesting that the cast distanced themselves from his viewpoint, and it obviously didn't affect the people attending the movie.
We found London to be quite expensive at this point in time. We did venture to Soho and have fish and chips at our little hole in the wall restaurant that we had discovered many years ago and is still there. We also went back to Balan's in Soho for dinner one night. The weather was sort of hit and miss in London, with off and on rain pretty much the whole time we were there.
On Saturday, we went to the Portobello Road flea market where Bill has found an array of antique clocks from the 20's and 30's for the past few years. We caught up with our friend Roger who Bill has bought most of them from. He was surprised to see us since it had been a long time. Bill did purchase another clock from him to add to the collection. During the week I also went shopping on my own to HMV. Yes, they still have a real record, CD and DVD store in London. I spent a couple of hours there shopping and picked up a couple of goodies while there.
It was nice to get back to London, but we hated the crowds and the Piccadilly/Leicester Square area was crawling with people. When will we return, I don't know, but at least I got my fix of London for a while.
So, it's back to New York and planning our next getaway in early 2013.
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