One Last Trip to London . . .

Hello, Blog Fans.  We had another "last" this weekend.   We spent Saturday in London with our good friends the Connells.   The main event was to see The Book of Mormon but we made a full day of it and had a great time.

We caught the 8:01 from Derby and arrived at St Pancras slightly past 9:30.  After sorting out our Tube tickets/cards we took the Tube to London Bridge for a walk along the South Bank.  Rain was coming but held out long enough.

Great photo, if I do say so myself!  (Given the adult nature of the show we left Alex with the neighbors for the day/night, much to his happiness).

It was nice to walk this part of the city as we haven't seen it before.  Here's Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.  I had done the macro planning (show and train tickets) but Andrea took care of the details for the day.  My family thought I'd have a hard time with that but quite to the contrary, it was a welcomed relief to be led around for the day.

Our morning stop was the Tate Modern.  The rain started falling just as we got there.  Given the relaxing nature of the day, we decided to head to the top floor for a coffee at first.  Nice view of the Thames River and the Millennium Bridge while enjoying our lattes and hot chocolates.

Afterwards, we had a stroll through the collections in the museums.  None of us, save perhaps Annabel, are artists so we were bemused and confused (as well as occasionally impressed) with the modern art on display.  It was great to leisurely stroll through the galleries with friends and comment as we went.

 poor photo of the actual art, but I couldn't bypass Annabel's impassioned description

Come on, Man.  Duct work as Art?  How about "Artfully crafted to symbolize a society split in two and the challenges of a good cold air return."  (Okay, I made that up).

 exciting, evidently

 we liked the paint ball plot

 deep thoughts in some areas

 more simplistic in others ("Man Pointing")

and, I have no idea what this one was about

  Vietnam II -- from the Tate website as it was better than mine

 Shades of Gray -- Nefertiti (whom we "saw" in Berlin)

One of the ones that Derek and I liked were the photos of William Eggleston (perhaps because it wasn't as quirky as some of the others).  Nice write-up here for those (okay, maybe just for Derek and me) who are interested.

and another -- most were shot in his hometown of Memphis in the early 70s

After the museum and a lunch stop, we worked our way back to the theatre district to take in the matinee of the Book of Mormon.  (I made the collage above from various web photos as photos were not allowed).  The performance was outstanding if perhaps a little, ah, rude to use a UK expression.  I'm sure my 14 year old heard some things for the first time.  In fact, I'm pretty sure we all did.

However, it was much more layered than simply poking fun at a religion/cult and kept us laughing (to tears in some cases) throughout the night.  Thumbs up all around.  A nice write up can be found here.

That said, I'm not sure this would go over well in Utah (or even Indiana for that matter).  Perhaps I'm underselling my peers in Hoosier land (but I don't think so).
 

After the matinee we quickly walked towards the river to see the last of the fireworks from the Lord Mayor's show.  One of the benefits of living so far north is fireworks at 5 pm!

We then retraced our steps through Chinatown and popped out near Oxford Street to have a nice, albeit leisurely paced, Italian meal (thanks guys!).  We were all a little tired on the train ride home but it was a great day all around.  So glad to have spent the day "Making Memories" with our friends.

Cheers.