London Pt. 2

Thanks to the evening prior, Saturday was also a late start to the day. Because we had missed Westminster Abbey's tour times by a hair the day before, that was our first stop. Lauren took off from work that day so she was able to accompany us. We grabbed a bagel to tide us over and went straight to the Abbey from home. The building is amazing inside, but unfortunately they have a strict no-photography policy. It took us about an hour to make it through the entire church and the cloisters outside. We saw all the kings' graves and other notable memorials, like those for Gregory Chaucer, Handel, Charles Darwin, and Sir Isaac Newton (featured in the Da Vinci Code movie).

After that, we headed north out of the government quarter toward Covent Garden to find somewhere to eat lunch. I was very much dismayed when Cameron and Lauren opted for Mexican food. (1) I knew that it would be Godawful Mexican food compared to what I'm used to, and (2) I didn't come to England to eat not-pub-food. But, I was outvoted and we went to Cafe Pacifico. From Covent Garden, we walked a little ways to Leicester Square to find some cheap theatre tickets for that evening. Cameron had never seen a musical (or a play, for that matter) before and Lauren and I decided he absolutely had to take advantage of being in the West End. We shopped around for a bit before finding 3 tickets together in the lower stalls for Wicked. It was 50 pounds, or about $72, but I thought that was reasonable for a show that I'd never seen before.

From Leicester Square, we walked north to Russell Square to go to the British Museum. Unfortunately we only had about an hour before the museum closed, so we had to restrict ourselves purely to the Egyptian exhibits. Their collection is definately impressive, probably because they had such a massive colonial presence there. I found out the next day, when I went back, that their Indian, Greek, and East Africa collections are equally impressive for probably the same reason.

After being kicked out of the British Museum (literally, they starting shutting the lights off while we were still inside), we made our way back down to the Thames for our 7:30 showing of Wicked at the Victoria Apollo theatre. We got a quick pint at another pub and then went to the show. Wicked is probably the last show that I hadn't seen but really wanted to, so I was definately pumped to see it. One of my teachers during my summer at NYU was an original cast member, so I was already pretty familiar with the music and dancing. Overall it was really great; not my absolute favorite, but that's only because I've seen a LOT of shows. Cameron, the musical first-timer, loved it, and that's all that's important!

We knew we wouldn't get much sleep at all the next night with the Super Bowl debuting at midnight, so we called it a night after the show and went back to Lauren for an uneventful end to the evening.