I woke up on the morning of Jan 2nd nervous, but ready to go. I waved goodbye to my boyfriend and I hopped into Kyle Fassett's car and in three hours later I would be at the airport.
I arrived at the airport...and I waited....
Three hours later I was on the plane! and after 7 hours and two attempts at watching that weird owl movie I was in London, or at least at the edge of it. Sami was kind enough to take a photo after our arrival in London looking fresh and highly attractive after our brief flight across the ocean.
I was dead tired, and highly jet lagged but there was no time for that. After dropping off my massive suitcase at the new awesome flats it was time to adventure with my new posse, Sami and Kyle and we would form the perfection that is the Trifecta. We were of like mind in that we all wanted the same thing; to cram as much of the London experience as physically could into the two weeks we had.
Instead of relaxing and napping which is what my body desperately wanted, we instead hit the road, ignoring our sleep deprivation ready to take London by force.
First Stop: Hyde Park
Jan 3 just happened to be the last day of Winter Wonderland in Hyde park, how handy! Winter Wonderland was this awesome festival, carnival, thing in the park, all Christmas themed which was perfect cause I was in Christmas mourning, still not ready to let go of my holiday cheer, so it was a perfect transition into the dreariness that is the post-holiday season of winter woes. The festival was full of families and kids running around hopping from ride to ride, it was a great crowd and made me forget just how tired I was. Everything smelled delicious, I was regretting the 7 pound meal I had just eaten, wishing instead I could eat everything and anything I passed by, from roasted nuts to some seriously tasty looking sausages.
After walking through the torture of the delicious smells of Winter Wonderland, we were off again this time to somewhere a little quieter. After a short tube ride we arrived at the National Portrait Gallery.
The National Portrait Gallery was the destination I had written about for my pre assignment. It is an offshoot of the National Gallery, only focused on portraits of famous people of Britain. Instead of focusing on the artist of the portrait, curators are more interested in the subject of the Portrait. Portraits are my form of art so I was really excited to see an entire gallery dedicated to them and it was all that I had hoped for. It was a great mix of both classic and antique portraiture with new contemporary and modern portraits. One room would hold a Tudor portrait while the next would have hold a photograph of Ian Mckellen. After a glorious 2 hours it was once again time to continue our journey.
Next stop was Oliver! We were on a Theatre Seminar after all so it was only right that we ended our first night with a show, Oliver! After some debating with the box office about tickets and what we could get and when we could get them...etc, we ended up with box seats. I didn't really understand what that meant until we were lost and couldn't seem to find out seat. After asking an usher, we were escorting to red curtain which was majestically swept aside to reveal a door with an M on it, and we had found our box. We entered to find that we were dead center stage, and couldn't be happier. After getting nice and cozy in our box we got ready for some musical entertainment.
Oliver was great, I admit there were brief moments in which I blinked a little too slowly and might just have missed a few moments, but the upbeat musical numbers and FANTASTIC set and lighting kept me plenty entertained. How the choreographers got all those kids to perform so perfectly is beyond my comprehension. It was the perfect way to end a great first day, but when I got in my bed, before I knew it, it was already day 2.
No comments:
Post a Comment