London - 'ow much for the girl?

At this point I have to admit that I was wrong in my generalization of last week that British Rail is crap. Well, some of it is – in my estimate, all Virgin trains covering Western England, for instance – but the National Express train journey to London from Edinburgh was sheer joy.
First of all, as soon as you get on the train and turn on your laptop, there’s free Wi-Fi. See, it doesn’t take much to make me happy. And there was also a mains outlet, so working on it didn’t eat up my battery. There also appeared to be more space between the seats – or maybe it just wasn’t as full, or I was in a better traveling mood … who knows? Anyway, at around Newcastle the seat at one of the tables became free, so I was even able to work on a flat surface for the majority of the trip.
So my apologies for slagging off UK train travel in its entirety – it’s only partly true.

We reached Kings Cross station late Friday afternoon and decided to walk up Euston Road to reach our hotel for the next two days. It had been recommended to us by our friend Eva Slane, one of Sarasota’s leading ladies who spends two to three weeks there every year and manages to go to the theatre or opera at least twice every day while she’s there. She’s quite simply amazing.
We met up with Eva at the Staunton Hotel on Gower Street, and were totally enchanted by our room and environs. Eva had even decorated our room with a vase full of beautiful pink roses.
We weren’t about to waste any time, so after a quick look in the paper and a chat with Kerry, the hotel proprietor, we knew that we had to go and see the musical “Jersey Boys” at the Prince Regent Theatre. We phoned and got two tickets in the nosebleed section of the theatre for 44 pounds each (about 100 dollars at that day’s exchange rate), but undaunted by that we set off for the theatre.

Walking around London is like kissing a gigantic, extortionately expensive ashtray filled to the brim with cigarette butts. I hadn’t been back for three years, and having lived in Florida all that time, I was unprepared for what it had become. It’s a construction site – roadworks everywhere you look, holding up pedestrians and vehicles alike. It’s the most expensive city I’ve EVER been in – I was simply gobsmacked by the prices I encountered and will be paying off the London part of our trip for the next year at least.
And EVERYONE and his aunt SMOKES – it was impossible to move without having to inhale someone’s cigarette smoke or leave a restaurant or pub without walking through a cancer cloud. They’ve banned smoking inside buildings now, you see (about bloody time too, if you ask me), but it hasn’t put Londoners off their cancer sticks. They simply go outside to smoke. The result is that every evening after work, you will view literally HUNDREDS of people standing outside a pub with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Great for non-smokers: there’s always a seat in the pub, and if they go out the side or back door they’ll also escape dying of cancer from second-hand smoke.

“Jersey Boys” was absolutely fantastic. If you have the chance to see it, do. It’ll send you out on to the street and into your bed with a song on your lips, and you really don’t realize how many hits Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons had until you see it. And it tells the true story of the group, its rise and fall and rise and fall and ... well, you get it. Go see it.

On Saturday morning we had breakfast with Eva, then went walking around the West End to see the sights. At around Covent Garden we decided to see a matinee of another show, and decided on the musical “Wicked”, a show that everyone raves about but I had yet to see. So we got two tickets for that afternoon’s matinee at a nearby ticket office, and made our way on the Tube to Victoria Station and the Apollo Victoria Theatre to at last hum along with Glinda and Elphaba as they became Popular and Defied Gravity.
You know what? It didn’t do it for me. OK, it may have been because we were in the nosebleed section again, and yes, the sound, lighting, set, cast and leads were all fabulous …but it lacked something. It may have been all the hype I’d heard about it, or perhaps it was Glinda’s Northern English accent, or the fact that she wasn’t Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, but I think I’d have enjoyed it more in New York or even Tampa. Never mind, you live and learn.
We hurried across London in the Tube and met Eva for dinner opposite our next theatre, the Duke of York in St. Martin’s Lane, where we thoroughly enjoyed THAT FACE, a dramatic, cutting edge play starring Lindsay Duncan and Matt Smith. Boy, was that great acting – I am always in such awe and extremely envious of such talent. I hope it comes to Florida some day – it’d be perfect for Greg Leaming’s Conservatory students or Stage III of the FST.

We took the bus home, packed our bags, got a cab to Heathrow on Sunday morning and boarded the flight home – totally broke, but happy that our two-week vacation with my dear brother Andy and his family Sian and Tomos, my new Scottish friends Gerry, Jeanette, David, Margaret and Roderick, and our friend Eva was such a success ... but you won't catch me in a plane again for a VERY long time.