This past weekend I made the trip to London on Saturday after a full day of planning the day before. I was literally on the computer for HOURS researching places to go, costs, underground maps, etc. etc. all for it to be kind of useless in the end! I even set up an itinerary to follow which lasted for only a couple hours before I decided to just do whatever.
Sooo, I took the train down to London Euston in the morning and got there by about 10:30am. I had to catch the 2pm rehearsal at the Barbican so I made a quick trip to the National Portrait Gallery before running off to see the dress rehearsal. First off, the NPG was pretty awesome cause I got to see all the portraits that you see allll the time whenever you're doing research on say, Shakespeare or Queen Elizabeth I, but this time they are the originals. The real deals.
Like this one:
Or this one:
I spent about 2 hours there and then caught the tube to Barbican. Unfortunately, a bunch of lines were down (Victoria Line) and certain trains going in certain directions, particularly the ones that just so happened to be the only ones to get to Barbican (Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan). Woot woot. So what should have taken about 25 minutes to get there took an hour and 15, but that's mostly because I got lost...again...and again...and again. Apparently I can't read signs very well. It must be the speed at which I walk (which is very slow) because I must just zoom right past them so that the lettering becomes the opposite. Anyway, I took the tube to Moorgate, which is actually just a 5 minute walk from the Barbican Theatre but since I exited the station in the wrong direction (and can't read signs with clearly marked arrows) I went the opposite way, thus finding myself incredibly lost in what seemed to be a completely deserted area of London. Barbican is, I suppose, the "business district" so there's only skyscrapers and whatnot there and since no one works on a Saturday, no one was there. It was crazy, and very very creepy.
I found myself at the Barbican eventually and managed to get into the theatre at exactly 2pm, which I must say is pretty impressive on my behalf. The rehearsal lasted for about 40 minutes, which is shorter than I had scheduled, so I made my way to the cafe for some lunch. This, of course, turned out to be a fruit salad since everything else was glutenous. Oh and I had tea, of course. Overall, the performance was very impressive and very different. I'm glad I saw it because now I can say I've seen the real deal AND Merce Cunningham. Yes, he was there in the orchestra pit. Here's a poorly taken picture of him to prove it:
Jealous? You should be.
Next stop, Leicester Square. I took the tube there and decided to go to Covent Garden to check out the street performers. I love those guys! lol And I don't care that Covent Garden is a total touristy place, it's fun to go to anyway. Afterward, I started walking around hoping to find Oxford Circus, but ended up at Trafalgar Square, which was fine by me. I'd never actually stepped foot on the Square since the last two times I'd seen it were from one of those London tour buses. Actually, I'm pretty sure I've stepped foot on the upper part of the square because there's a gallery up there, but not in the ground level main one. Lame, I know. Took some pictures, stared at the fountain and the people around and then headed off in search for Oxford Circus. I was determined to do a little shopping, particularly at Primark. For those of you who don't know what Primark is, it's a ridiculously cheap store that's huuge. It's the size of a department store but has prices waaay cheaper because they don't advertise or do any of that showy stuff, etc. The clothing is cute, probably not that good quality, but it's cheap and that's fine by me!
Of course I didn't find it though. Or I did, but not until 7:30pm when it had already closed.
I walked around for a good 5 hours actually - voluntarily - I'm not THAT ridiculous that I can't find an obvious area like Oxford Street and the like in London!
Leicester Square, Covent Garden, Soho, Chinatown, Oxford Street.
I'd never been to Soho or Chinatown before so it was nice to actually see new places. Cherry said I'd know when I was in Soho when I saw an adult store and surely enough, I did. There's neon lights on that store, there's a guy with make up and a shiny outfit on, yep, I'm in Soho! I didn't really do anything in Soho though except walk through it, and before I knew it, I was in Chinatown. And of course I found myself in a supermarket looking for kome (Japanese rice) but that didn't happen. And then I couldn't find any actual supermarkets around London, so I couldn't buy my rice anywhere. This was incredibly uncool because secretly the whole reason I wanted to go to London was to buy the rice, not even to see ol' MC Choreographer. Oh well, I filled up on sushi and teriyaki don for dinner so that will have to do for a good month until I go back to London.
I bought Chinese coconut buns at the bakery! ...Just wanted to point that out.
The Japanese place was called Wasabi and it was okay. 2 pieces of kappa maki for 1 quid. 1 freaking quid! 2 pieces of inari sushi for the same, except they weren't pockets filled with rice like they normally are but rather some rice with a bit of inari on top. 1 "mochi" which was actually manju because it had un in it (Is it just spelled "un"?). Finally, chicken teriyaki don. Not bad. Man I miss Japanese food from back home.
After dinner I was just plain exhausted so I caught the train home and fell fast asleep, only to wake up the next day with a message from my friend Aurore saying that she'd like to go shopping in Leicester. Of course I went.
Leicester is about 45 minutes away. It's quite a big town (bigger than Leamington) and has a huge mall and shopping square. Since I hadn't done a lot of shopping the day before (I didn't feel like lugging shopping bags around wherever I went), I decided to actually purchase stuff and to my delight, a Primark was just around the corner. It was brilliant. You really don't know how awesome it is to find a cheap place like that that has really cute clothing in the UK. It's wonderful!
Our shopping day ended with a drink at Starbucks (tall non-fat chai latte please) and a hang out session back at Aurore's. She had brought along a new friend from her English class named Jennifer who was also from France and we were all getting along quite well. I think she's going back to France now though because even though she was supposed to be an au pair like us, it turns out she got accepted into the school she wanted so now she's leaving. Aurore and I are still set to go to some pub in Rugby and do some salsa dancing. That should be interesting since I haven't salsa danced since grade 8 PE class and I didn't try very hard because it was really awkward dancing with my brother's friends who were in grade 11.
More awkward stories to come,
Hayley
Post script: I'm off to Manchester this weekend for Thanksgiving!!!
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