London Days 31 & 32: 3 shows, afternoon tea, and some shopping

It seems like my time here in London is quickly coming to a close. while I will be glad to be back with my family and friends in the states, the longer I am here, the more I love this city. It will definitely be hard to leave. On friday we saw two shows as a group. After class we headed over to little Venice, which looked like it was a really pretty part of town. once we got there we boarded a barge and watched a puppet show. I learned that I really dont like puppet shows. Dont get me wrong, it was a really well done show, the space was really cool, the puppets were great and the puppeteers were amazing. But as a whole, puppet shows don't really interest me much.

We had another show that night, so in between the shows we headed over to the Hilton Hotel for afternoon tea. one of my roommates found some really awesome coupons for a chocolate themed tea, so we decided that sounded pretty awesome. Since Ive decided I really dont like herbal tea, I just went with hot chocolate, but we had sandwiches and a huge tower of desserts that we had to scarf down a little faster than we would have liked to in order to make it to our next show.

so we headed across the Thames over to the Rose theater, which was built on top of the original Rose Theater from Elizabethan England. We saw the Alchemist, which was such a funny show. I think this is one that would have been good to read before hand. The plot was a little hard to follow, but It was hilarious and really well done. this was also a really cool theater space which probably only 40 seats on 3 sides of the playing space. So we were all really close to the actors. It was a fairly short show so we walked back to the tube while it was still pretty light, past the Globe. I said my goodbyes to it since I'm not sure if we will be back to this part of town and vowed to return someday.

On Saturday we went back to Portobello Road for the last time. we had a good time looking at antiques, and I walked away with some buttons from the 20s/30s and the 60s as well as some sequins from the 30s. After that we went to Primark, which is sort of like the British version of forever 21. Its nice because you can get European looking clothes for really really cheap, but consequently they are also really cheaply made so I haven't been able to get myself to buy anything from there. But it was fun to look around.

That night we went to the National Theater and saw Children of the Sun. It was such a well done play with one of the biggest, most lifelike sets I have ever seen, which is amazing to think about because every few days they move the set off the stage for another show to play because they always have two shows playing on the same stage over the same span of time. The plot was sad, but the characters were funny and entertaining and frustrating at the same time. The script was a little different because they spent most of the time arguing about science and the meaning of life and all of these moral and societal issues. It would definitely be a cool script to read. I think everyone in the group really enjoyed it.