London Visit

Hi,
On Tuesday I left for a 2 day visit to London to take in 2 musicals:  The Phantom of the Opera, and its sequel, Love Never Dies. We stayed in The Royal Trafalgar, which was positioned perfectly. Both Her Majesty’s Theatre and The Adelphi Theatre were walking distance, as were Buckingham Palace, The Houses of Parliament and Trafalgar Square.

m & m men in m&m world, London

After finding the Hotel and settling in, we headed off to Regent Street to find stores such as Hamleys and Apple (that store was amazing!). After spending a few hours looking around we headed back to the hotel. Of course, you can’t go to London without getting a little lost. By a happy coincidence we found the M and M world. 4 floors of m&m products. Seriously, it was huge and one of the most surreal shops I have been in.
At around 6.45 we headed off to Her Majesty’s Theatre for Phantom. Although the theatre was small, it fitted the musical perfectly – being about a theatre. The story was amazing, the singing was fantastic, the music was brilliant, the effects and makeup were spell bounding, the whole thing was stupendously great!

Buckingham Palace, London

The next day we went to Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guards. It was really good.
We also went to Trafalgar Square and went to see Big Ben (well, the clock that houses the bell, Big Ben – Thank QI for that factoid!). London is really actually quite a pleasant place, and not anywhere near as stressful as some make it out to be.
At 1.30 we headed off to the Adelphi Theatre for the matinee performance of Love Never Dies.
Although very different from Phantom, and set 10 years later, the musical was, again, amazing. With a few rock pieces and an absolutely wonderful 10 year old singer playing Gustave, the whole show was a thrill to watch. The effects were astonishing and I still can’t work out how some of them were done. The ending was stunning and almost (almost:  as in it didn’t, but nearly did) brought a tear to my eye.
Sadly, Love Never Dies received little acclaim and is ending on the 27th of August. I seriously can’t see how any one wouldn’t love the show, but it seems I’m a minority there, and so it seems is the whole of the Adelphi Theatre when they gave it a standing ovation.
All in all I had a superb couple of days in London.

Thanks
Matt B

I'm back!

I am back from my relaxing holiday in Palma Nova, Mallorca (Spain). With the exception of one morning the weather was hot and the suncream annoying. Lazing by the pool stupidly hoping to get the tan that never comes reading a good comedy crime or one of the New Scientist magazines I took with me or just sleeping. It was bliss.

Then I decide to cool down by going for a swim in the pool sometimes lying on the far too small semi-deflated inflatable. After a splash around I return to the sun lounger and dry off with very little help from my towel. Again I lose myself in Humpty Dumpty murder case willing Jack Spratt to succeeed.

After I realise I'm melting I go to out cool room on the second floor of the hotel. I throw myself onto the bed and rest until lunch. At lunch I enter the air conditioned dining room and am confronted with an all you can eat buffet (the holiday was all inclusive). After finding a food stuff I like I eat it with ravish. I rise and collect seconds (sometimes even thirds) and eat that too. I rise again and find the puddings. For some reason in Spain there is always some kind of blamanche/table cream/set thing that I always love. After my fourth lot of pudding I realise that they're clearing the lunch stuff away.

I return to the sun lounger and rest/read for a while. At some point I'll go into the pool or maybe go to the room for some escape from the unforgiving sun. Dinner goes much the same as luch, but with nicer food and higher quantities.

I either return to the sun or retreat to the room where I stay until the entertainment.

The entertainment was... varied. Yes, varied is a good way to put it. Some nights it was shockingly bad and other shockingly amazing.

As a family we would go for evening walks along the beach which were pleasent and cool - with the nightime breeze being a god-send in comparison to the unrelenting sun of earlier.

So most days played out like that and I loved being able to relax. On one day we had a game of min/crazy golf. My golfing skills are reasonable and I got a hole in one on a par 3, so I was very pleased despite not winning overall.

On two of the days we went to the beach. The beach had pedalos with slides available and so we hired one for an hour on both days and pedalled out to sea (within the sectioned area, ofcourse). After we reached a reasonable depth I started the sliding. It was really fun. I mean it was the best bit of the holiday for me. I'm a confident swimmer, but have never gone much further than where I can stand in the sea so sliding in and going under was a bit of a shock. The sea was cool, but not cold which made it even better. I can't really explain in to you as it was just sliding and jumping from a boat with pedals, but it was fun.

Also I am glad to take the hotel band off after wearing it non-stop for a week!


Thanks
Matt B