My sister Jenny flew down from Leeds/Bradford on Wednesday night. It was her birthday on Thursday, and today we went up to London to see Wicked, the musical that tells the story of the Witches of Oz, based on the book by Gregory Maguire.One of the advantages of living in Southampton is that London is only just over an hour away on the train. We got to Waterloo at 10:30 this morning and went to Borough Market, a food market next to Southwark Cathedral. It's a great place for getting something to eat without actually having to buy anything, as all the stalls have samples. Jen and I tried cheeses, breads, jams, olive oils, vinegars, muesli, cherries, strawberries...
We had booked for the matinee performance but we still had plenty of time before it started, so we walked along the south side of the river, past the replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. We went into Tate Modern, frankly just because we needed the toilet, but we found that there was an exhibition on called Global Cities, so we went to have a look. It focused on 10 cities in the world and compared them in terms of shape and size, style, population density, infrastructure, etc. Did you know that Mumbai has a population growth of 45 people per hour, and by 2050 it will have overtaken Tokyo as the world's largest city, with over 40 million inhabitants? The exhibition was excellent; well worth a look - and it nicely filled in an hour or so of time we had to spare. We walked past the Royal Festival Hall and London Eye then got the tube to Victoria.
I had expected to enjoy Wicked, but I have to admit that I expected it to be just average. How wrong I was - it was fantastic. Kerry Ellis, who played Elphaba, had a voice to die for. The songs were great, the story was excellent, all in all a really good show. Plus we were back home by 19:30!
4 comments:
I'm SO jealous! I've been wanting to see Wicked for SO long! Maybe someday...
Is that the farmer's market we wandered into when I was in London last December? And you didn't stop at the Globe? Come on! That was great fun! LOL!
That's the one, Jill. We bought huge slabs of chocolate brownie and didn't end up eating them till the next day because we pigged out on other stuff that day instead. We did consider stopping at the Globe, and I did tell Jen the story about the tour guide who stopped talking every time we got near her, but in the end we decided to pass...
Oooooh! I saw it last Friday! It's sooooooo good isn't it! I went with my friend who was raving about how she really wanted to see it. I wasn't really bothered at all - but I enjoyed it so much! The music was great - the story was interesting and fun and I'd recommend it to anyone, young or old. I'm not sure how all that green paint stayed on her throughout though! x
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