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Getting Photographed

We arrived at London’s Gatwick Airport, South Terminal. The scheduled arrival time was around 10am, and that’s pretty much when we arrived.. Upon arrival we had to do the immigration and customs dance.

From there we took a coach at 11:20 from Gatwick to Heathrow and then onward to Cheltenham Spa, where we stayed at the Travel Inn. On the website, they note that the inn is next to the T.G.I. Friday’s. Although we had dinner at ask, we went back to the hotel and had dessert at T.G.I. Friday’s. I’ve never been to an American T.G.I. Friday’s but our waitress was a parody of American friendliness, even going so far at to sit down at tables while taking orders. Fortunately she didn’t do that at our table. The United States certainly exports our the worst aspects of our “culture”.

Basic, Expensive. At least in 2001.

American Culture

• We woke up and took the coach from Cheltenham Spa to London’s Victoria Coach Station. From there we took ourselves and our stuff to the Aarden Hotel (see hotel photos). This was the base of our visit to London for the remaining three days. The Aarden Hotel was very close to the bus station–the man at the information desk told us it was going to be a 15 minute walk. In reality, it would have been 15 minutes if a traffic accident had happened in the middle of the street between us and the hotel and we’d been forced to walk around several extra blocks to get there.

See more Cheltenham Photos

• We took advantage of Rail Europe prices before leaving for the UK to purchase Tube Passes, a one day pass for River Thames cruises, and a Gatwick Express pass so we could get to the airport on Friday.
• After getting to the hotel and getting ourselves situated, we headed to pick up our tube passes and then took the tube over to the London Eye. The London Eye is the world’s largest Ferris Wheel, and immediately upon seeing the Eye, I was reminded of Robert Lawson’s book The Great Wheel — a children’s book on the Newbery Honor Roll. Oddly enough, I reread the book about a month ago, so it was fresh in my head.

See London Eye Photos

• After taking the Eye, we wandered by the Westminster Abbey, and walked right in and toured the building. It was incredible, and the presence of so much history in once place makes America seem so young.
• Tuesday evening we went and saw “F***ing Games,” a play at The Royal Court Theatre. The play was written by Grae Cleugh and directed by Dominic Cooke.
  • The web site promoted the play as follows:
    • “It’s just not realistic to expect one person to remain faithful to another. I mean it just doesn’t work, does it?”

      Terrence and Jonah have been together for ten years. Jude is young, good-looking and always chooses his boyfriends badly. So, when he brings round his latest, Danny, the games begin.

      F***ING GAMES is Grae Cleugh’s first play.

• To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised at the play–it told a reasonable story, and was well acted. We both got irritated with Jonah at the end, and I was also very annoyed with Terrence, although I suppose I’ve known guys like Terrance and I’ve wanted to smack them around in real life. If you should chance upon a performance, I would see it–but I wouldn’t fly transatlantic just to see the play.

Things I Learned

If you want to type the “£” symbol on the US/Windows keyboard, you need to dig out the old ASCII codes… £ is ALT-0163 for those of you who are curious. (Use the key pad numbers, not the numbers above the regular keys.) For those that do not understand this suggestion, try using the character map–in Windows normally Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map; also accessible internally from most word processors.

I use Yahoo! to convert money, like US$ to GB£.

FlyerTalk.Com continues to amaze me. I’m amazed that these people let me read their comments, let alone occasionally post questions and comments of my own. Interesting London Threads I read while preparing included “London During The Week From H#$*,” a charming post by MEX1K.

Theatre Thoughts

After doing some searching on the London Theatre Guide, MT and I settled on two different plays: Fucking Games and The Royal Family. You can guess who picked which one.

There were 58 plays on the stage during the three days we were in London–a wide range of choices, including the Vagina Monologues (a play that has caused a stir in Bloomington with the billboards that promoted the play’s November 2001 performance), and The Complete History of the US (abridged).

Booking tickets for Fucking Games was very straight forward and easy to understand. The London Theatre Guide pushed me onto the Royal Court Theatre’s web site and from there it was easy.

Tickets for The Royal Family was significantly more difficult. At first I started by using the London Theatre Guide’s ticket purchasing mechanism–that mechanism limited me to £37.50 tickets. I tried another search engine, which also limited me to £37.50 tickets, along with an expensive per ticket surcharge of something like £6 or £9. I forget what site that was, I didn’t go back or bookmark it. At the last second I searched Google for “Theatre Royal Haymarket” and then I went directly to the theatre’s web site, which then directed me to Ticketmaster/UK. That particular ticket search actually allowed me to search for the lower priced tickets, and we opted for the £25/ticket seats (Section Upper, Row E, Seats 9 to 8 — to be exact), with a £4 service fee for the order, not per ticket.