London, Thursday, 3/19/81
We decided to take it easy today, as we were both rather tired, and Cheryl appeared to be coming down with a cold. We got up around 8:30 and had coffee, toast and apples, and then set out for the local Holiday Inn- Swiss Cottage, where we discovered we could buy our tickets for tomorrow’s tour. After changing some money we set out for the U.S. Embassy, where we met Tom & Diane for lunch at 11:30. Tom told us that the U.S. Embassy in London is the largest U.S. Embassy in the world. It has a huge, horrid looking eagle on top which Tom understandably hates, and in the glass front there is a bullet hole. After lunch we walked down So. Aubrey Street, stopping at the Alpine Gallery to see an exhibit of English Watercolors. We turned onto Curzon Street, where we found a number of clubs. These may be the Men’s Clubs I’ve read of in books. We turned into Shepherd’s Market, which has a lot of antique stores, and then down Piccadilly to St. James Street, where we stopped in at the British Tourist Information Office to find out about going to Brighton.
We then walked down to Leicester Square, arriving at 2:30 when the half-price tickets go on sale. The line was quite long, so we went into the National Gallery, which is just behind Leicester Square, on Trafalgar Square. The Gallery had a special show on, called Second Sight, which compared a landscape painting by Rubens with a later painting by Gainsborough, which was based on, or at least strongly influenced by, the Rubens painting. The show included a twenty minute film discussing the two paintings and giving background on how the artists put their paintings together. I found it made a tremendous difference in my appreciation of them. I usually find paintings much less interesting, and am attracted primarily to portraits of famous historical personages. But the film made me eager to see the paintings discussed, and to see other landscapes to compare how other artists approached the subject. I think I’ve learned a lesson — to appreciate art you’ve got to do your homework beforehand. I think one reason I enjoy the palaces, castles, etc. is that my studies of history have made them almost alive to me. I know something about the people, how they lived, what they thought … I just hope I’m doing a decent job of communicating this to Cheryl as we go along.
We went back to Leicester Square, and found the line much shorter, so we purchased tickets to “Annie”. Then we sat in the park to decide where we would go for dinner, not wanting to repeat what happened last night. We looked through some of the guide books we had, and decided to try “Asterix”, a creperie in south-west London. The book told us it was near South Kensington station, with a walk. It turned out to be a long walk, indeed, but we had plenty of time. With the exception of the salad, which was drowned in dressing, the food was alright, but not worth a trip across town.
We’ve graduated to figuring out bus routes from our map, and discovered a bus that went right from the restaurant to Victoria Station, where the Victoria Palace Theater is located. We were a bit early, so we purchased some postcards before entering the theater.
We loved “Annie”. Singing, dancing, big production numbers, and lots of cornball — you couldn’t help laughing at the lines (“I want Gunderson - I dont care if he’s on the Dillinger case!!”). We had good seats, and you canlt beat the Leicester Square prices — £8.50 for the two of us.
