London Catchup

It's been a busy few months in London and I've accumulated a lot of pictures that have not yet been shared!  In an attempt to try to keep family and friends up to date (and to remind ourselves) with what we've been doing, I've loaded a bunch of phone and miscellaneous pics and sometimes videos with little descriptions for your interest!

Here's what we've been up to:

39 Steps (click on the link to watch the trailer - it was excellent!)

London Lions vs United States Lakenheath Eagles

And a funny little phone clip of the half time show for your amusement.  My finger is over the mic near the beginning so sound is muffled.

Friday Night is Music Night (BBC Radio 2)

The episode we saw performed was celebrating the 150 years of the London Underground called "a musical tour of London's underground.  Ralph McTell performed live his hit from 1974 called Streets of London which I had not heard before.  He was such a sweet man.

The Play that Goes Wrong

I cried from laughter watching this play.  We saw it at our favourite pub theatre for free using our What's on Stage membership before it became a lot more popular and now is playing at Trafalgar Studios.

Here is a before and after of the set:

(Before)

(And After)

And a couple scenes from their promo poster:

Pheroze won a Dim Sum dinner and cocktails at Ping Pong (had only been in to use their toilets one day!) and a movie called "She a Chinese"as part of the BFI Chinese Film Festival.  The movie was lame but my first even dim sum afterwards was excellent!

The Magistrate starring John Lithgoe (from 3rd Rock from the Sun) at the National Theatre

This is my snap of the stage that did all sorts of twists and turns and even flipped open like a story book at one point!  The play was hilarrrriouss!

One Man Two Guvnors

The poster says it all.  I would recommend JUST to see the component of audience participation that blew my mind!

Now let me take a break here to introduce you to my "community cat" I ran into every week during my community locum speech therapist gig in East London.  He was always dirty but so friendly!

Here's a little video clip I stopped to take of him one day :)

Alice Russell at the Maida Vale BBC Studios

Lavish Habit - our local cafe

Pub cat at a pub who would join patrons on their table or lap near Euston - sooo sweet!

Mom Came to visit for the month of April!

We did:
The Tate Modern

My favorite coffee chain promoting the Tate Modern :)  They got me!

View from the Tate Modern cafe - right across from St. Paul's cathedral.

Sir John Soane's Museum by candlelight (First Tuesday of every month - HIGHLY recommend to my fellow Londoners - it's free!)

Eilen Jewell at Bush Hall

Photoshoot at Image Thirst - This was a groupon (so many photoshoot groupons in London!).  We picked up ourselves some party hats at TK Makks (like Winners in Canada) and had a lovely little English photoshoot complete with hot drinks, cake and a wind machine!  The first is a picture of the one we ordered to be printed (is a picture of the picture) and the second was our silly choice I quite enjoy - I had to keep maneuvering my head in different directions to get it under my mom's enormous hat!

La Bayadere at the Royal Opera House

Waldorf Afternoon Tea - yup it was a groupon too!

Becoming Picasso at the Courtauld Gallery - this was a phenomenal exhibition.  Really interesting self portraits and pieces in response to his friend's suicide.  Here are a few below from the website:

War Horse - The horses in the play were essentially giant puppets and the puppeteers moved them just like horses, made the horse sounds, the actors actually rode them around the stage.  Crazy!

Counting Crows - A favourite band of ours and on our list of concerts to see for a long time!

City Cruise along the Thames with my mom!
 

Fraulein Julie at the Barbican - definitely one of the weirder plays we've seen.  Get this - the whole thing was filmed live and the live footage was shown on a big screen above the stage.  They had multiple actors playing the same character so they could get close ups within the same scene and different angles.  Then they had this table with all kinds of items that made sounds required in the play - two guys were in charge of doing all the sound effects.  They would just pour water in front of the microphone when necessary, timing with the live footage, make a cork popping sound (which was really off at one point), make live footsteps sounds and all kinds of stuff.  

London's Brewing Beer Festival

Children of the Sun at the National Theatre - click to view the trailer.  We sat in the front row at this one (day tickets) - My favorite part was the final explosion at the end where there is a massive fire ball that sends a heat wave over your head and glass that sprays everywhere.  According to Pheroze a piece of glass hit him on the cheek.  This is the wall that recoiled down at the beginning and after the first intermission.


Hever Castle - with two of our fav people Ingrid and Mike!  Missed a picture of the garden maze- whoops!

Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum Exhibit at the British Museum - We visited Pompeii on a family trip once so I wasn't sure if this would reveal anything new but the exhibit was so so interesting and definitely worth paying for!  Pheroze bought me some Herculaneum replica earrings with birds from a mosaic that was recovered and showcased at the exhibit from the gift shop for my bday - LOVE the British Museum gift shop!

For my "birthday weekend" we had a number of fun things lined up:

Josh Rouse at Islington Assembly Hall - He's a favorite of mine for sure and his concert was awesome as expected:

We even discovered we really liked his opening act Sean Rowe:

UEFA Women's Champion League Final at Stanform Bridge Stadium (where Chelsea plays)

One Blenheim Terrace - Amazing 5 course brunch with mimosas!



First course was a smoothie sampler in a shot glass with a straw - very zoolanderesque.  The rest of the meal was fantastic, filling and delicious!


Walked right by Abbey Road Studios in the rain to get to our breakie place!

Saw a quartet lunchtime concert at St Martins

Merrily We Roll Along - A great musical...but even better when there are celebrity SIGHTINGS!  Here's my bad phone picture as proof :)  Five rows in front of us was a Hangover 3 group including Ed Helmes (Dentist character who lost his tooth in Hangover 1 and Ken Jeong - the asian villian).  Pheroze takes credit for spotting Ed.  I spotted Ken - he turned around with his wife and did a funny face and jazz hands to someone behind us haha.

Whew!  That was a lot of pictures!  I'll leave you with my beautiful peonies from Pheroze.

Hampton Court Palace Foodies Festival tomorrow!  Hopefully next update won't have too much!