Hmmmmm..... where to begin. Perhaps with the beginning of the day – that seems most logical, I believe. After breakfasting early in the morning (8am) we laid some maps out in the kitchen of the Astor Quest and decided our plan of attack. Late the night before, I had checked Seatwave.com (where I had purchased Billy Connolly tickets a month or so ago for the 20th of January), and organized for the tickets to be sent to my very attractive and just overall awesome friend, Mr. David Chow, Esq, who is living here at the moment. However, Seatwave decided that I didn’t need my tickets sent to me more than one day before the show. So they sent the tickets to Dave’s house on the day preceding Billy – aka, yesterday. However they didn’t send them to Dave’s house. They sent them to the guy who is underneath Dave – a damn hairdresser. Matt and I spent much of the morning on the Jubilee line, in Willesden Green, trying to get our tickets off this hairdresser. We arrived at 10am, a usual time for businesses to be opened (we believed) and every other shop on the street was open except for this one hairdresser. We walked around town for a bit, saw a 7,000 pound Jaguar (2000’s model, I was shocked), ate some chips from Sainsbury’s (and by chips, I mean crisps – and by crisps, I mean they weren’t crisp at all, it was like eating hardened McDonalds lard with meagre flavouring). Returned to hairdresser by 11, and the fucker still wasn’t open. What kind of a hairdresser doesn’t open by 11? We started to stress that perhaps he wouldn’t open today.
Anyway we decided to head to St. John’s Wood, to the famous Abbey Road recording studios where the album of the same name (along with many others) was recorded by The Beatles. We found the famous crossing. It had no pomp and circumstance whatsoever – no plaque, no statue. I was shocked. We were unable to complete decent “crossing” photos because there were only two of us at the crossing, and three Japanese girls who spoke absolutely no English. Rather than breaking the language barrier, we both got photos of each of us walking across individually. Besides, these girls were probably Yoko fans, and I wouldn’t be caught dead in a photo with them.
We headed back to Willesden Green to find that the hairdresser was open – SCORE. Now to wrangle the tickets. I was expecting a harsh reception. Dave said the three guys that worked there were “foreign” and “shady”. There was a lot of Arabic restaurants in town, so I was expecting some turban-wielding, Allah-praising camel jockey (no racism intended) to be furiously guarding my tickets with some form of ceremonial Islamic halberd, while at the same time providing quality and stylish barbering services at an affordable price. We walked in.
“Hello, we’re from Australia. We had some tickets sent to my friend who lives upstairs but apparently they were signed for by you?”
“Oh yes, I’ll just run out the back and get them”.
The man runs out the back.
“Here you go”.
We were pleased. Very pleased. So pleased, in fact, we decided to have a pint. At midday. We went to a Free House called Angies and threw down a Carlsberg. ‘Twas a nice, homely pub. With a sort of family atmosphere.
We had another look at our map for what to do next. Matt said we should go check out Lords Cricket Ground, as it was in the neighbourhood. So we went over there for a tour at 2pm. It was a pretty cool tour, we toured the Museum and saw The Ashes – got the story, saw the crystal trophy as well. Lots of old memorabilia around. Then we toured The Pavilion – where the dressing rooms are. Ricky Punting, it seems, has never got a test century at Lords (the last one was Michael Clarke last year). And Shane Warne has never taken more than 5 wickets in an innings there. Heading into the stands, and then up into the Media Box, we got a grand view of the ground and learned that to become a Lords member, you need to be at least 16 years of age, be recommended by another member, have an interview and then wait NINETEEN YEARS. Either that or donate 2.5 million pounds to become a member overnight. Amazing.
After this we Tubed back home, had a quick change, and met Dave in Leicester Square for a quick couple o’pints before we went to see Les Miserables. Was great to see Dave, he gave us plenty of friendly travel advice for the rest of our trip (like the best way to take sneaky photos inside the Sistine Chapel by covering the red light on your camera). We walked to the Queens Theatre in the West End (or rather, Dave walked us there) and then we went to see Les Mis. Now, because EVERY person Matt and I had asked about what we should see recommended AGAINST Les Mis, we had extremely low expectations. But we were both quite blown away by it. I can’t fault one of the performers (well, the guy who played Marius shit us off, but we both realized that this was not due to his talent). It was great to see a show in West End, especially the World’s longest running musical, and we highly recommend to those of you who are slightly more upper-class, like us.
Walking home from the Tube to our hostel, we discussed what we were going to do the next day – our last day in London. We’re going to head to Greenwich, then Westminster Abbey for Church, and then either Parliament for Question Time or the Camden Markets. Haven’t decided yet. Matt remarked that after we did these things, we’d be “Lon-DONE”. That’s all from me.
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