Viewing entries tagged
London
Trafalgar Square. What a hodgepodge of people. In the summer afternoon it was busy: all noise and people. I could have loitered at the square all day just people-watching, but everything else around Trafalgar Square is so exciting too - The National Gallery, St. Martin in the Fields, The National Portrait Gallery, and all the captivating details of Charing Cross and the Westminster area.
We rushed early to St. Paul's in London one morning so we could explore the cathedral and climb the dome before the large crowds hit. Even so, I had no patience with the early bird tourists giggling with glee at the whispering gallery or shrieking in panic at the tight spiral staircase to the top of the dome, so I wrote poem stanzas on the climb to distract myself from any irritation.
Stone and marble may be durable, but even these hard surfaces cannot survive what we human beings as a species can survive: time and the touch of millions of hands and lips, touching, revering, eroding, forgetting. Funeral slabs are worn completely smooth, memorials are cracked and decaying, and some are even defaced in damnatio memoriae. We build, but still it is only temporary. Eventually hands and feet rub and erase, and we are only left to puzzle over fragments and faulty stories.
The London Eye is incredibly touristy in all the worst ways: shoulder-to-shoulder crowds, crying babies, a line out the door to restrooms, heat, overpriced bottles of Coke, and carnival attractions like street magicians and a carousel and exhibits like "Shrek's Big Adventure!" and "The London Dungeon (it's a SCREAM!)" and a very cramped aquarium.
It's here - it's finally here! After such a long wait once again there is the weekend clash of titans, the relentless progression down a field, the glory in the lit up scoreboard. Football season is well underway and with it comes all the rabidity of fans fixated on screens over bowls of chicken wings.
I’ll admit: like many of my generation, I’m a Potterhead. I grew up with Harry Potter and dressed up for midnight book releases and midnight movie releases. As a Potterhead I knew about the new play on London’s West End “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” - the eighth installment in the Harry Potter story. I also knew that all the shows were sold out through May 2017, including the preview shows that started in June...Even so, on Saturday afternoon when we just happened to be in the neighborhood and we just happened to walk past the Palace Theatre, its gorgeous brick facade done up in “can’t-miss-me” Harry Potter headlines, I figured it wouldn’t hurt if I went in and asked about tickets at the box office.
