Highlights of a Weekend in London
1. Seeing the ever-articulate Kenneth Brannagh in Chekhov's Ivanov. Brianne and I waited in line for two hours in the early morning to get tickets and ended up sitting in "Box A": which sounds like luxury but in reality more closely resembles a literal box, except with Victorian wallpaper, our own private toilet, and a box attendant with whom none of us knew how to properly interact. But it was all worth it to see in person Brannagh's acrobatic voice when he's giving a monologue, especially during the particularly impressive gem in which he ran through almost two pages of text in about thirty seconds of a nervous trance.
2. Eating. I'll admit that food is pretty much always half my reason for traveling, but that's especially true in a vegetarian-friendly city like London, where even the fast food places have veggie options. (Real veggie options too, not like in France where they offer you a plate of cheese.) In one day I had a chocolate croissant for breakfast, lunch at Hummus Brothers, a pumpkin-pea burger with basil mayo and fruit relish for dinner, and a passion fruit creme caramel with ginger bisquit for dessert, or for "pudding," as I now say (see point 3).
3. Learning that the technical name for my speaking disability is WAS: wandering accent syndrome. I swear: you put me in a room for five minutes with a Londoner and I'm throwing around words like "rubbish" and "brilliant," saying the phrase "when I was at uni," and generally making a linguistic ass out of myself.
4. Feeling that wonderfully relaxed feeling you get when you go back to a city that you know really well. Going back to London felt less like a vacation and more like going home: no pressure to see everything as quickly as possible, no nervousness about figuring out the transportation system, no looks of vacant, smiling confusion when someone asks you a question in German (although there were maybe a few looks of vacant, smiling Anglo-philia when someone spoke to me in a Scottish accent). I just felt quietly happy the whole time, and was perfectly content to spend hours in Battersea Park watching dogs running around.
Enjoying the view from Box A
2 comments:
In Prague, too, "vegetarian" meant a slab of Camembert, breaded and deep-fried, with boiled potatoes.
I'd like to try that pumpkin-pea burger; are we talkin green or chick? or sweet i suppose? chick pea and pumpkin could be good, especially in the early winter.
green peas are disgusting 85% of the time.
This is the first time internet has been fast enough for me to actually load to the comment page, but the mention of London and Hummus Bros was just too much! I don't know when I'm going to be able to make it back to that amazing city, but I think I know what you mean about it feeling like "home". I hope your time there was incredible, and I wish I could have been there as well!
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