Three Blind Mice

Last night, Darrel and I went to see Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap.  It is the longest running play ever, and as you can see from above it has been around for 59 years.  Opening night for the play was on November 25, 1952 (at the Ambassador Theater next door) and it transferred to The St Martins Theater on March 23rd, 1974.  It was good, but we both think that the reason for the longevity of the play is because of it's longevity.  However, it was interesting to see such a staple of London's West End.

Harry Potter Mania

The British have many national treasures...and Harry Potter is definitely one of them.  All week long  newscasters have been talking about the World Premier of the final film taking place here in London tonight.  For the Premier, a red carpet starts in Trafalgar Square, wraps itself around the National Gallery and ends at one of the cinemas in Leicester Square (the length is probably 2-3 football fields long).  Also, a gate was erected around the whole square, and organizers were handing out around 3000 wristbands to people letting them into this gated area.  What is crazy is that people have been camping out in the square since Monday, in hopes to get a wristband. 

No, I didn't get a wristband...I managed to make my way up to the National Gallery to take these pictures :-)

The Castle, Whiskey and a Queen

This past weekend, we took the train up to Edinburgh, Scotland....the English countryside is beautiful! 

Berwyck upon Tweed...a small town we went through right before we got to Edinburgh.

We left London at Noon and arrived in Edinburgh 4 1/2 hrs later...

On Saturday, we got up and ventured up to the Castle. As you can see from the pictures below, it is set high up on a hill/cliff, and overlooks the whole city. 

The front gate of the Castle

St. Margaret's Chapel...the oldest building on
the grounds of the Castle and in Edinburgh. 
It was built around 1130.

The back of the National Shrine...inside it names the scottish soldiers killed in WWI and in later conflicts.

The front of The National Shrine

Since we arrived in Scotland, I wanted to find a place to try some different Scotches (a little side note...in Scotland they don't call it Scotch, they just call it Whiskey).  After our trip up to the Castle and lunch, we did find a place offering tours called The Scotch Whiskey Experience.  It was more of a tourist trap (if you couldn't tell by the name), fairly expensive and you only were able to try 1 whiskey.  However, they did have a restaurant and bar in the same complex...so instead of taking their tour, we just went to their bar and had our own little tasting.  They had probably over a hundred different kinds of Whiskeys, and we had the bartender gives us tastings of the ones she thought we'd like.  We tried 5 different ones, and it was a really great way to try some we had never heard of before.

On Sunday, we had some time to kill before we had to be at the train station and decided just to walk around seeing more of the city...

The Royal Mile (aka High Street) leading up to the Castle

St Giles' Cathedral

Inside St Giles

During our trek, we stumbled upon this church...

What is so special about this Church you might ask?  Well, we were thinking the same thing.  It was odd because the church had policeman in front checking id's and names of those trying to enter.  Also, you can somewhat see all the petitions being set up in the picture. 

Well, an hour later we had our answer...

That's right...we found ourselves about 6 feet away from the Queen!!!  We had heard on the news that she was in Edinburgh a couple of days before to open the Scottish Parliament.  What we didn't know is that she was staying  for the week and that we happened to be at her church at the perfect time :-)  We couldn't have planned it any better. 

We were very lucky not only because we got to see the Queen, but also because the whole time we were up in Scotland it never rained. If you know Scotland, you know that it rains probably 85% of the time. So our track record of bringing good weather is still with us ;-) 

We had a brilliant weekend, and hope to get back up to Scotland again.

Miss Jackson If You Are Nasty

Last night, Darrel and I were able to get tickets to Janet at the Royal Albert Hall.  It was her #1's Tour and last night was the first night of 3 that she is doing here in London.  In fact, it was the first time in 13 years that she has played a concert in the UK, and it was really great...for the most part.  The only problem we had was that it was too short, and there happened to be an intermission that was too long which was a little odd.  It was one of the first rock/pop concerts that we've been to that actually had an intermission, and we wondered if she had done an intermission with all her shows in the States or rather it was something new that happens here in the UK.  Even though the show was short, we still loved it and thought that it was quite brilliant. :-)

Carnaby Street

Last weekend, Darrel and I did a little more exploring and we came across this in Soho.  After we saw the sign welcoming us to Carnaby Street, we both thought we had heard of it before but couldn't really put our fingers on it.  I proceeded to look it up in Wikipedia, and found out that Carnaby Street is the place where the original "mod" fashion movement started back in the early sixties.  It's a really fascinating part of town and would've been brilliant to see back in the day.

Also last weekend, we were able to go and see the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and our friend Erik perform Carmina Burana at the Royal Albert Hall.  For this performance, the Royal Philharmonic was joined by 3 choirs, which included a youth choir.  I have always loved Carmina Burana and it was quite amazing to be able to see it performed live in the Royal Albert Hall.

Borough Market and All's Well That Ends

Yesterday, I met up with my friend Andrew from New Orleans (he's been in town this week) and headed down to the Borough Market, which is a huge farmer's market that runs on Thurs, Fri and Sats.  It is underneath the rail on the Sounthbank of London.  That area of town is really interesting becasue it is the old port of London, and has cobblestone streets and many warehouses...you can almost imagine what it would've looked like way back in the day.  The Market has all different kinds of stalls, and you can get almost anything there.  We ended up eating meatpies for lunch and they were really tasty :-) 

Entering the Market

Further in the Market...the stall on the right is selling Turkish Delights

After lunch, we caught a matinee performance of ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL at Shakespeare's Globe Theater (which is about a 10min walk from the market).  We had much better seats for this performance than Darrel and I did the last time we saw something at the Globe.  It's quite brilliant watching a Shakespeare play here in London (let alone at The Globe), because the English have such a better understanding of the language...it's much easier to understand and follow  than having an American try to perform.

The play is about to begin...

The British Museum

Yesterday, Darrel and I made our way to The British Museum.  The items that are on display in the museum are definitely one of the best collections of looted and pillaged items from around the world.  Wikipedia is a little bit better with their political correctness and state "The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London.  Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present."  It is really quite brilliant what you see when you go there:  they have a portion of The Rosetta Stone, which was used to decipher ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics;  they have one of the larges collections of Greek and Roman Antiquities, which include many of the original pediment sculptures and friezes (known as the Elgin marbles) from the Parthenon; and, they also have one of the Easter Island Statues on display...just to name a few of the things we saw. 

The museum and its collection is truly unbelievable.

A little blurry, but it does describe the Rosetta Stone.

The Rosetta Stone

Gayer Anderson Bronze Cat from Egypt

"Lely's Venus"

The East Pediment from the Parthenon

Another view of the East Pediment from the Parthenon