Yizz's yawn: London

Just come back from spending the weekend in London. The family had clubbed together to send hubby and me to a show(Lord of the Rings) and overnight stay for my 50th birthday and this was the weekend they had booked.

We drove up, yet despite having planned out the route on multi-map, and borrowing Kelly's A-Z we still managed to get lost looking for the hotel. It took us nearly an hour to find our way around the rabbit warren of roads near Tower Bridge and even when we did spot our hotel, we couldnt get to it as the road was closed for roadworks, so it involved another go around Algate to find a one way street going one way in the right direction.

So in the end we only had time to drop our suitcases in the room and dash back out to grab a London black cab to the theatre. By saving on messing about walking to undergrounds, changing tubes etc we then had time for a drink and sandwich in a pub before the show.

The performance was really good with fantastic special effects, although there was a bit of licence with the story line to fit it all into 3 hours. It was the matinee performance though so lots of kids but the audiance was very well behaved. Some of the younger children got a bit upset when in the second interlude some Orcs came into the stalls and scared them. The only two dissapointing things were the price of the ice creams in the break and the fact that no one seems to dress up to go to theatre land any more.

We had exchanged some Tesco vouchers for deal tokens to use at Planet Hollywood but it was too early to eat when we came out, so rather than go back to the hotel and then return for our dinner, we wandered into Covent Garden and watched the street theatre. This was almost as good as the show, so we dug deep into our pockets at the end to fill the guy's hat. Well deserved.

Planet Hollywood was packed and it was a 2 hour wait until we were seated. I think if we had not had the Tesco vouchers we would not have eaten there as we could have got the same food for half the price just next door in the TGI Friday. But you live and learn.

We did try walking around after that to take in the sights and atmospher but London is so much more crowded now then when we used to go to the West End in the '80's and after being knocked aside for the fifth time, Martin could see I was getting a bit stressed by it all and suggested returning to the hotel.

Here is a little note for Sir Ken Livingstone though. We had paid £8 for the cab to Drury Lane, we looked at the underground (and aside from it being dirty, scruffy, uncomfortable and involving at least one change of line to get us back) the tickets were going to cost £4.50 each! So Ken, what is the point in a conjestion charge if its more cost effective, quicker and more comfortable/convienient to take a cab??!??

Anyway a big thankyou to the girls, my parents, son-in-law, Wayne and Martin for a fabby weekend. I really enjoyed my present.

I would love to put some photos of the hotel, the theatre, the street show, on here, but this morning we walked over to Leadnam market where I went to take a few more pics, only to have my card come up saying reader error. When I finally sorted it out, all the photos from the day before had been wiped.

And just to proove how expensive London can be - even though we already had our tickets and hotel paid for:

£3 - park car until restrictions ended
£10 cab plus tip to Theatre Royal
£19 two drinks and sandwiches each in pub for lunch
£8 two ice-creams and bottle of water in theatre
£10 drinks waiting for table in PH (I was only drinking soda!)
£10 service charge and bit over the money I had in vouchers for meal
£10 cab back to hotel
plus the amount of shoe leather we used looking for an ATM that wasnt going to charge us £1 to get some cash out!!

Instead here are my last few days entries for the BPS