neither here nor there: day 4

My notes for day four are brief. I was a day behind by this point and the entry for Wednesday actually begins with a rant along the lines of how much it sucks to lose your passport in another country. I was getting ahead of myself even then.

Day four began with the Tower of London, where we missed just the first few minutes of the beefeater tour.




We spent most of the morning there. I restrained myself from buying fake tiaras and hot pink change purses in the Crown Jewels gift shop...for my niece, of course.


After a snack of imposter Flake 99 we crossed Tower Bridge and walked up along the embankment to the Globe Theater, where we had previously purchased tickets for that afternoon's performance of Othello.


In case you didn't catch it the first time, we bought the cheap "groundling" tickets. Groundling means standing and it's as bad as it sounds, especially when the play is over three hours long. I thought it would be like attending a concert, and we even chose to stand in the back, leaning against the wall between us and the seated audience members. Initially we were in the shade, but for the second hour or so we were in full sun and I think that's what really put me over the edge. I didn't pass out or anything but I was extremely relieved when the intermission finally arrived. Everyone who'd been sitting stood up and walked around while most of us groundlings sat on the ground for fifteen minutes or so. Concrete has never felt so good.

But don't get me wrong, the play was excellent and I think the experience is well worth it (I especially enjoyed curtain call, when cast members whose characters had just been killed came back on stage dancing and clapping, à la A Knight's Tale). But if you can scrounge up another ten pounds, I think it's probably worth putting it to good use toward an actual seat.


Outside the Globe Theater we contemplated our next move which involved, briefly, considering another, more authentic ice cream snack. We resisted. Neal observed some architectural similarities between one of the theater buildings and the Tate Modern, just up the river a bit.


From there we made our way to Knightsbridge, where we breezed through Harrod's food stalls, with a detour at their luxury Egyptian restrooms. Had we known then what we knew a bit later, we probably would have had a snack of some sort at Harrod's before moving right on to the V&A, but instead we decided to head out for a more substantial dinner and take advantage of the V&A's Wednesday evening hours.


We ended up at the Kensington Creperie and it was a short walk from there to the V&A...which was closed to the public for some private event. I've worked in a museum before, I know what that means. That means you don't want to spend the money to pay the guards outside of their normal schedule, so you monopolize the one evening the museum is open late and the general public - the international, general public - has to suffer.


We sat outside on the steps for a bit. By then it was too late to make it to any other attraction on our list and several hours too early for our nightly clubbing. Sigh.

I tried mostly in vain to get a good picture of one of the many hot pink cabs I saw driving around.






Defeated, we walked back towards Harrod's, stopping by Café Nero for our nightly "pud" before heading back to the hotel.


On the tuberide to the hotel, I remember feeling a little freaked out that something similar would happen at the British Museum now that I'd saved it for our last full day in London. That would prove to be the least of my worries.