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First part here.
Well, the last 4 or 5 days have been pretty crazy. A long day in London on Thursday, a 450 mile round trip to Falmouth on Friday, working Saturday and Sunday, and most of yesterday seemed to be spent dealing with insurance companies (one for the damage to my wife's car when someone drove into it, and the other for my Galaxy S3 phone that I dropped down the stairs) so today has been the first chance that I've had to take stock and look at the photos from the trip.
I always knew that there wasn't going to be much opportunity to take photos though due to a packed schedule which involved:
Driving to London
10.00 Pre-Raphaelite Exhibition at Tate Britain
12.30 The Ritz for lunch
2.30 Queens Theatre for Les Miserables
6.00 Reubens Hotel, Buckingham Palace Road, for dinner
7.30 Victoria Palace Theatre for Billy Elliot
Driving home
And a full day it certainly was. I got up at 4.30am. We got home about 3.00am and I got to bed at 4.15am.
I was a bit concerned that we might fall behind schedule and be late for something, but it all worked out perfectly as far as timing was concerned.
We got to Tate Britain about 9.30, so we were half an hour early so we sat in the plaza of Chelsea School of Art.
I love this plaza. It wouldn't be a bad place to go to college, would it? At one time I was hoping that daughter would choose Chelsea but she chose Falmouth instead, which probably suits her much better.
Then we noticed that a queue was forming outside the entrance to the Tate so we joined it. Just as well as the queue quickly grew quite long behind us. This is what we were going to see:
I must say we were given VIP treatment, menus were brought to us in the bar and the head waiter was summoned to take our order, which I gather isn't normally the 'done thing'. None of the other diners ordered from the bar. I explained that we'd have to leave the restaurant by 2.00 which caused raised eyebrows, followed by reassurance that it would not be a problem.
The Ritz has a two and three course 'set' menu plus a la carte. We went for the 2 course set menu as we were short of time. The only problem with this is that there was a choice of just two main courses and two desserts - and that was it. The main course was a choice of brill or veal. My wife chose the brill and I chose the veal. Still, it did mean that she made up her mind quickly, which is very unusual - she normally takes an age to order from a menu!
In the Ritz dining room:
The food was very good, as you might expect. It was of the nouvelle cuisine variety and not particularly plentiful, but we didn't want anything too heavy for lunch - didn't want to be nodding off in Les Mis! My veal was very tender and tasted delicious.
Our food was served promptly so we were able to leave at 2.00. I think we were the last people to enter the dining room (as we started off in the bar) and the first to leave. It would have been better to have had more time to savour it all, but we had to keep to the schedule.
We took another taxi to the Queens Theatre and were taking our seats at about 2.20pm, for the show to start at 2.30, which was just about perfect.
I got told off by a steward (or whatever he was) for taking photos during the curtain call. I can understand no photos during the performance but I was surprised that there was a problem during the curtain call when the performance is essentially over. So I won't post them here. If anyone knows what the legal situation is on that please let me know. The conditions do state 'no recording equipment to be used'. Presumably that could cover any time you are in the theatre, including before, during and after the performance.
We hadn't seen Les Mis before. Musicals aren't necessarily my thing but I did enjoy this one. It was very sad in places and for anyone going it is advisable to have some tissues handy.
Then it was another taxi to Victoria, to the Reubens Hotel for dinner. I chose this one because they have a special rate for people going to the Victoria Palace Theatre. For a hotel that I'd never heard of before it was very grand. The food was a carvery style, which was perfect as we could choose what and how much we wanted and didn't have an anxious wait for food to be brought to us.
Then it was a five minute walk (no taxi this time) to the Victoria Palace Theatre for Billy Elliot.
There are four different actors that play Billy at different performances and Harrison Dowzell, the young lad who played Billy for our performance was absolutely superb. It's hard to see how anyone could play it better. He richly deserved the long standing ovation and rapturous applause at the end, as did many other members of the excellent cast.
I was a bit worried that I might be fed up with sitting in a theatre seat by the end of the second show in one day, but not a bit of it. The show was enthralling from beginning to end. Tissues are needed at times during this one as well, by the way.
Then it was a 10 minute walk back to where we'd parked the car in the morning and the drive home. As planned I stopped at Reading for an hour's sleep. We got home about 3.00am and I got to bed about 4.15, almost 24 hours after I'd got up.
I'm not going to buy a 75mm by the way - not at the moment anyway. I've bought myself a Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 tablet instead - it's my birthday next month.
Sorry this was a bit long - thanks for staying with me!
Well, the last 4 or 5 days have been pretty crazy. A long day in London on Thursday, a 450 mile round trip to Falmouth on Friday, working Saturday and Sunday, and most of yesterday seemed to be spent dealing with insurance companies (one for the damage to my wife's car when someone drove into it, and the other for my Galaxy S3 phone that I dropped down the stairs) so today has been the first chance that I've had to take stock and look at the photos from the trip.
I always knew that there wasn't going to be much opportunity to take photos though due to a packed schedule which involved:
Driving to London
10.00 Pre-Raphaelite Exhibition at Tate Britain
12.30 The Ritz for lunch
2.30 Queens Theatre for Les Miserables
6.00 Reubens Hotel, Buckingham Palace Road, for dinner
7.30 Victoria Palace Theatre for Billy Elliot
Driving home
And a full day it certainly was. I got up at 4.30am. We got home about 3.00am and I got to bed at 4.15am.
I was a bit concerned that we might fall behind schedule and be late for something, but it all worked out perfectly as far as timing was concerned.
We got to Tate Britain about 9.30, so we were half an hour early so we sat in the plaza of Chelsea School of Art.
I love this plaza. It wouldn't be a bad place to go to college, would it? At one time I was hoping that daughter would choose Chelsea but she chose Falmouth instead, which probably suits her much better.
Then we noticed that a queue was forming outside the entrance to the Tate so we joined it. Just as well as the queue quickly grew quite long behind us. This is what we were going to see:
I must say we were given VIP treatment, menus were brought to us in the bar and the head waiter was summoned to take our order, which I gather isn't normally the 'done thing'. None of the other diners ordered from the bar. I explained that we'd have to leave the restaurant by 2.00 which caused raised eyebrows, followed by reassurance that it would not be a problem.
The Ritz has a two and three course 'set' menu plus a la carte. We went for the 2 course set menu as we were short of time. The only problem with this is that there was a choice of just two main courses and two desserts - and that was it. The main course was a choice of brill or veal. My wife chose the brill and I chose the veal. Still, it did mean that she made up her mind quickly, which is very unusual - she normally takes an age to order from a menu!
In the Ritz dining room:
The food was very good, as you might expect. It was of the nouvelle cuisine variety and not particularly plentiful, but we didn't want anything too heavy for lunch - didn't want to be nodding off in Les Mis! My veal was very tender and tasted delicious.
Our food was served promptly so we were able to leave at 2.00. I think we were the last people to enter the dining room (as we started off in the bar) and the first to leave. It would have been better to have had more time to savour it all, but we had to keep to the schedule.
We took another taxi to the Queens Theatre and were taking our seats at about 2.20pm, for the show to start at 2.30, which was just about perfect.
I got told off by a steward (or whatever he was) for taking photos during the curtain call. I can understand no photos during the performance but I was surprised that there was a problem during the curtain call when the performance is essentially over. So I won't post them here. If anyone knows what the legal situation is on that please let me know. The conditions do state 'no recording equipment to be used'. Presumably that could cover any time you are in the theatre, including before, during and after the performance.
We hadn't seen Les Mis before. Musicals aren't necessarily my thing but I did enjoy this one. It was very sad in places and for anyone going it is advisable to have some tissues handy.
Then it was another taxi to Victoria, to the Reubens Hotel for dinner. I chose this one because they have a special rate for people going to the Victoria Palace Theatre. For a hotel that I'd never heard of before it was very grand. The food was a carvery style, which was perfect as we could choose what and how much we wanted and didn't have an anxious wait for food to be brought to us.
Then it was a five minute walk (no taxi this time) to the Victoria Palace Theatre for Billy Elliot.
There are four different actors that play Billy at different performances and Harrison Dowzell, the young lad who played Billy for our performance was absolutely superb. It's hard to see how anyone could play it better. He richly deserved the long standing ovation and rapturous applause at the end, as did many other members of the excellent cast.
I was a bit worried that I might be fed up with sitting in a theatre seat by the end of the second show in one day, but not a bit of it. The show was enthralling from beginning to end. Tissues are needed at times during this one as well, by the way.
Then it was a 10 minute walk back to where we'd parked the car in the morning and the drive home. As planned I stopped at Reading for an hour's sleep. We got home about 3.00am and I got to bed about 4.15, almost 24 hours after I'd got up.
I'm not going to buy a 75mm by the way - not at the moment anyway. I've bought myself a Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 tablet instead - it's my birthday next month.
Sorry this was a bit long - thanks for staying with me!
Amazed at the opulence of the Ritz, can imagine the look of surprise on your wife's face when you said to the cabbie, Ritz, please ... 
<< Dom Perignon 1998 
Great pictures. 
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