The London Blog #4

Wednesday, April 28, 2010
11:12pm

Started off my day by going to Trafalgar Square to pick up my London Pass, which gives me free entry to 55 places.

From there, went to the Handel House Museum, about Georg Friedrich Handel, who was born in Germany, but lived in London most of his adult life. On the way there, I got lost - it's very confusing when you get off the tube and you can't tell which direction you're facing and there are lots of little alleys and half-streets, which aren't marked well; only the major streets!  Anyway, while I was looking for it, I ran into Alicia and company! Such a huge, bustling city and we meet again!  They had a map and with their help, I found it. It was boring. Plus, I sat in gum (fairly fresh gum) and my butt smelled like wintergreen. Weird.
From there, I went to the Benjamin Franklin museum.  Got lost there too, because it's on a wonky side-street that wasn't marked well!  This one was an actual tour, and it was pretty cheesey, despite my interest in Benjamin Franklin.

After that, I went across the Thames (this is a pic of the walking bridge across from Embankment to South Bank) to find the National Theatre and before that, I came across the Royal Festival Hall at South Bank, where the London Philharmonic plays. Lo and behold they had a concert tonight featuring a cellist doing Prokofiev Sinfonia Concertante, so I bought a ticket (more on this later).

Then, I found out the tour of the National Theatre wasn't until 5:15 (it was 2:00) so I bought a ticket for that and went back to my hotel to change and freshen up.  Then I went back to the National and while I was waiting for the tour, I sat down to read the Evening Standard directly across from...Richard Eyre, former director of the NT and current director of....you guessed it: Private Lives (the play I'm seeing 3x this week!)
I sat there for 10 minutes, pretending to read the paper, and trying to get up the guts to tell him how much I love this production, but I was too shy and finally, he got up and walked away. Just after he did, I confirmed with a woman who said hi to him when she passed him that it was in fact him. 
Then I took the tour. What a fantastic facility this is!  I don't think anything in LA compares - maybe Dorothy Chandler, but that's all.  They have 3 amazing stages there that seat 400, 750, and 1200. We got to tour the entire facility - scene shops, craft shops, backstage, onstage, rehearsal rooms, etc. The tour guide was very good too.

After the tour, I went to the concert.  This cellist, Danjulo Ishizaka, was phenomenal!  The Prokofiev is incredibly difficult - it's not so much a showpiece, but it's got a great deal of personality and my only complaint is that he could have done a bit more to enhance that. 2/3 of the way through, he broke his A string. They had to stop and he went off and changed it, then there was some kerfuffle about where to resume the piece. They also played Myaskovsky's Symphony #6, which is a nice piece too. Oddly, it features a choir in the last movement, and for whatever reason, they sang crowded in the corner entrances of the choir loft and it seemed like about half of them weren't even all the way into the hall. I've never seen anything like that before.

Tomorrow I am changing hotels in the morning, so I have to work that out, find the new hotel, etc. I will go there and leave my luggage because I have to check out of here by 11 and can't check in there until 2. Am seeing PL again at 2:30 tomorrow, so will officially check in after the play.  Still trying to decide what sightseeing to do.

Au demain...