Travels in London - Days 4-6: Puppets and Revolutions, Bealtes and Bowie, and Snow and Chinese Food.

Wednesday was a good day. An early start as we went off to see our friend Kate and have breakfast in an "Australian Cuisine" Cafe, a concept which I find a little amusing. The last time I had seen Kate was for her X-Factor party on Sunday night, but as I had been awake for some insanely long amount of time I hadn't exactly been the most participatory in the event, so it was good to see her when I was, you know, concious.

After that we popped ourselves onto a bus tour around London, and checked out the local landmarks and took various photographs. The plan was only to ride it for a few stops but given it was freakishly cold we (completely unrelatedly of course) decided to stay on the bus instead.

But this was ok, because IT SNOWED!!!!!

I realise that I may be getting ridiculously over-excited by this but I was and am incredibly excited by the snow. It is simply something you don't get in Melbourne, so it was rather a new experience. I spent literally an hour staring out the window and watching it fall. Amazing.

After the bus tour we had italian for lunch and then headed over to something I had been looking forward to ever since I had gotten to London, "Les Miserables."

I have loved Les Miserables ever since my friend played the song "Stars" for me, nearly 10 years ago, and I've been hooked ever since, listening to the complete symphonic recording so many times I could now sing most of the musical by heart. So you can understand I was a little excited.

Overall the production was quite solid, suffering from a couple of bizarre line changes and a few poor child actors, but it was impressive to see it staged out, and the amount of turntable work they used was very interesting. In particuliar the trek through the sewers was very well done, showing time passing in quite a unique way thanks to lighting and liberal turntable use.

After Les Miserables, we were still in a thoroughly musical mood, and so on a whim checked out the half price tickets and secured two rather good seats for Avenue Q. I had never seen Avenue Q before, being a little turned off by my brother's mention of "the puppet sex scene", but had also heard many, many good reports. On the whole I'm very glad I saw it, as it was genuinely hilarious for most of the show (the puppet sex was, indeed, a bit much).

AND THEN IT SNOWED ON THE WAY HOME!!!!!

Ahem. Sorry.

Thursday started with a trip to the natural history musuem, which sadly we didn't see very much of, as the museum had to be evacuated.

Twice.

We took that as a sign that we weren't wanted, and so instead visited the Victorian and Albert, checking out some historical pieces before heading off to a pub lunch. On the whole one of the nice things about visiting Britian is I can be all exotic and try the local cuisine, because the local cuisine is sausages, pies, and other such things, meaning I thoroughly enjoy myself.

After lunch Lexi and I went our separate ways for an hour or so to do our christmas shopping for each other. I got her a present I hope she'll like, but she reads this blog so I'm not telling you what it was. Hi Alexis. Just keep walking.

Then we checked out the photo gallery where there was an exhibition of 1960's celebrity photography, includes the Beatles, David Bowie, and the like, before heading back to the Hostel for our final night in London. There was snow on top of the cars outside the Hostel. Yay!

We packed up and left the Hostel this morning and headed down to the train station to board our train to Birmingham. I must confess I love train travel, so was rather excited. London looked much the same out the train window, but the big surprise was to come when we left the outskirts of London and found the fields blanketed as far as the eye could see with snow. It was simply beautiful, and an amazing site to see. The snow didn't last too long before it returned to fields of green but I kept my camera out for as long as I could.

Birmingham is nice, like London but newer and smaller, so after checking in to our hotel we went to visit a friend of Lexi's for a drink, and then chinese food for dinner at one of those wonderful restaurants that you only know is there if you've been there before, so was free of tourists or crowds.

Anyway I'd best leave off here as Have I Got News For You is about to start. More blogging once more has happened.