London for a Day

I have wasted this Sunday morning sitting at my computer after waking at 9AM, but I was really beat yesterday and I guess I have to take a break every now and then.  And it has been raining and gloomy this morning--another excuse for sloth.

Yesterday I took the train to London.  I can see why the train was really packed.  For about $25 you can get a round trip ticket for the train and a day pass for public transportation in the city. It seemed that on the way to London and on the train back, there were mostly young people--teens and early twenties.

I was congratulating myself on the smoothness of my connections--the bus at 8:12 and the train just two minutes after I arrived at the station--when I found out that the Picadilly Line in London, the one that was to take me to Leicester Square--and the half-priced ticket office--was shut down for the weekend.  I had already taken the Victoria line to Green Park and now had to walk to Leicester.  Not a long walk, but not a short one either.

When I got to the ticket office, I bought a matinee ticket for Private Lives with Toby Stevens, who was so sexy in a recent version of Jane Eyre and is the son of Maggie Smith, and Anna Chancellor, perhaps best known as Caroline Bingley in Colin Firth's version of Pride & Prejudice and as Hugh Grant's jilted bride in Four Weddings and a Funeral.

With ticket in hand--this was about 10:45 and the show was at 2:30-- I just started to walk around.  I have already written extensively about London in a previous blog I wrote when I was here in 2011, so I won't go into everything.  But one of the reasons I love London so much is that there is always something new to see.

I went to Covent Garden for a cup of tea and saw this fellow playing a mournful tune on an instrument I did not recognize.

Very nearby a group of very enthusiastic rugby players were participating in some sort of tournament on a make-shift field of sand.

A little ways off I walked by the Odeon theater, where I saw this beautiful frieze

And a block from there was this store, which seemed to mostly be selling different types of rope.

Apparently the store caters to yachtsmen.

It's amazing to me that a store like this still  exists. And then of course, there's this one.

Umbrella stick and whip manufacturers.

I suppose if you live in that neighborhood, you can afford to have your umbrella stick custom made (or bespoke, as they call it here).  In the window of a local estate agent (real estate agent) was this property.

Georgian townhouse--asking price only 5 million pounds or $7.5 million.

All the time I was walking I would stop in shops to try to find some memento of the birth of baby Prince George.  But I only found a mug--which was not very nice-- and a make-shift fridge magnet.  Apparently the Brits are not as interested in the Royal family as we are.

I happened across Golden Square in this area as well.  And in the middle, this statue, which say it is Georgius II.  But a plaque nearly indicates it was Charles II.  In any case, the subject was getting no respect.

The plaque also said the square was the site in Dickens book Nicholas Nickelby of Nicholas' uncle's house. Dickens said the square was "a little wilderness of shrubs" presided over by a "mournful statue."  These days, kids are playing giant chess in the square

or ping-pong.

All this is very near what was the center of fashion in Britain in the 1960s--Carnaby Street.  It's still pretty nice.

Ending up at the Liberty Department Store.  I don't believe I've ever been in the store, but from the outside, it is beautiful.

After walking up and down Oxford Street--the shopping mecca of the city and incredibly crowded--I had a very nice lunch at a place called Verduna--Italian.

Then I started back to the theater district.  Talk about crowded!

This doesn't even begin to show the number of people in the area.  This is actually Gerrard Street--the Chinatown of London, just a block from Leicester Square.

 Leicester is half a block down the street from here--if you can get there.

Private Lives was terrific.  I saw the play in New York with Alan Rickman and Lindsey Duncan and I think I liked this version better.  It is problematic because it involves some domestic violence--the men hit the women and vice-versa.  But you have to put that aside and enjoy the comedy of the play.

After the show I got on the tube--which was so crowded that people were waiting in the hallways on the way to the train platforms.  But I got to Victoria Station just five minutes before the train left for Brighton and I was back in that city in an hour.

I waited for the bus outside a pub where the customers were obviously celebrating the victory of some team or other.  Thus this sign...

And finally, on my way home, I had to take this picture of a house just a block from where I am staying.  Such beautiful flowers everywhere in Brighton.

The sun has come out, so I might take a walk.....or I might just veg.  Decisions, decisions.