London and Wales 2004

Reba and I were invited to attend Anne Lister and Steve Purbrick's wedding in Wales July 10. We've known Anne for about 8 years, having first met her in Norfolk at a folk festival there.  Later we went to London and enticed Anne into chauffeuring us around England in a car that we rented.  We maintained our warm relationship through the annual Folk Alliance conferences. 

This was a "must" event, particularly since there were a batch of new plays on the West End that we wanted to see and our good friend Toni Wood was still in Scotland and could join us in for a couple of days. (Toni is the Australian whom we met at Rocky Mountain Folk many years ago.  She took the picture of us in our Falcon  Ridge shirts that we used on the cover page of this web site for many years.)

So Reba worked out a tour with an agency in Minnesota that we discovered on the internet.  We were to fly over on Monday night on United using frequent flyer points, stay in London 4 days, be picked up by a guide in a van and shown the sights of Wales Sunday-Wednesday, have dinner with Anne and Steve on Thursday, sightsee on Friday, attend the wedding on Saturday, go back to London on Sunday, and fly home on Tuesday July 13.  Everything worked like a charm.  We saw 9 plays in London (only 1 turkey), walking our legs off in the process.  The weather was extremely variable, chilly and wet but we lost no time to that. 

Prices were very high despite the availability of senior discounts everywhere.  The Visa conversion rate was $1.83 and the currency conversion booths were charging about $2.03.  It hasn't been so long ago that the exchange rate was $1.60.    Of course you have to be careful about what you complain about--gasoline was going for about 85pence per liter, or about $3.40 per gallon.

So, we landed in London on June 29 and got to our hotel, the Strand Palace, by 10am.  However we couldn't check-in until 2pm.  This gave us time to go to the half-price ticket booth in Leicester Square and get tickets for our first show, Democracy, about Willy Brandt and the politics of Germany in the post-war era.  This was written by Michael Frayn who also wrote Copenhagen and Noises Off.  A good starter.  We had our first and only Chinese dinner in China Town with Toni at the Crispy Duck and then headed back to the Strand Palace for a good night's sleep.

Wednesday was our London sightseeing day, highly successful despite a 24 hour London tube strike.  We took a ride on the London Eye, a large Ferris Wheel designed for seeing the terrain of London.  It takes 50 minutes to make one revolution, worth its cost (about $18 for seniors) on a bright clear day. Next we went on a Duck ride.  A Duck is an amphibious vehicle, designed for the invasion of Europe in WWII.  It is reasonably fast and comfortable.  The cost wasn't bad, about $42 each. We have been on them in Austin TX, Ft. Lauderdale FL and Boston MA.  Then we went to the Salvador Dali Exhibit-- an extensive display of his sculptures as well as paintings.  This pretty much ran us out of time with Toni.  We stopped in a pub, had a drink and saw her off.  We had dinner at Paridiso e Diablo near our hotel and then saw Dirty Blond, about Mae West, pretty much a turkey.

Thursday we took advantage of the opportunity to see two plays, Rat Pack (3 actors playing Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Sammy Davis Jr, rather well done) and Anything Goes (a revival of Cole Porter's musical--good songs but real hambone plot and dialogue.)  We had dinner at a small Italian restaurant (Trattoria Aurora) in the theatre district.

Friday we saw Songs My Mother Taught Me with Lorna Luft, Judy Garland's Daughter.  Lorna does some 40 Garland hits with a smooth patter.  This is a one woman show, backed by an 11 piece orchestra. 

Saturday we got in two plays, the best we saw--We Happy Few and Journey's End.  We Happy Few is a play based on a true story of seven women who toured Britain in WWII bringing theatre to a devastated nation.  The women played male and female roles in an era when women were not expected to travel or work out of the home.  Journey's End is an all male play about life in the trenches at the end of WWI.  We wrapped up the evening with pizza at an Italian Restaurant (Piaza London).

Sunday began a new adventure.  We were picked up by our guide Freddie and taken to Stratford-Upon-Avon where we saw Shakespeare's birthplace and the nice little town around it.  We also saw the church where he is buried. There was a craft fair going on that we found interesting.  We then crossed the border into Wales, stopping at the interesting town of Llangollen.  We toured the timbered black and white home of the eccentric Irish "Ladies of Llangollen".  We wound up by taking the scenic route over Horseshoe Pass for a two-night stay at Ruthin Castle (a Best Western!!!).

Monday was an interesting day driving through Snowdonia national Park and Aberglaslyn to the Llechwedd Slate Caverns.  We rode the miners tramway into the  enormous caverns where the miners would work for years in one cavern by candlelight.  Then we took the steam engine driven Blaenau Ffestinog Railway to Porthmadog.  Then by van we went to Caernarvonm home of the first Prince of Wales.

Tuesday was another sight-seeing day.  Parliament House in Machynlleth and the National Botanic Garden in Carmarthen, birthplace of Merlin.  The Botanic Garden was especially interesting because of the unique single-span oval hothouse.  There were electric carts available so Vic was able to move around the extensive grounds easily.

Wednesday we saw the large Cardiff Castle and the Museum of Welsh Life (similar in concept to Williamsburg VA).

Thursday we had dinner with Anne and Steven and Mary Hall, a wonderfully lively friend of Anne's from Boston.  We spent a lot of time with Mary and hope to get together with her back home (her husband Chuck Hall is a musician.)

Friday was a day "at leisure."

Saturday was the wedding.  The setting was a 17th century manor house between Monmouth and Raglan in Wales.  They had a small civil ceremony early in the day, and then most guests were invited to a handfasting ceremony in the afternoon, followed by a potluck buffet/barbecue, followed by a ceilidh - and dancing outside on the lawns around the house, and then retiring inside to a fine drawing room once it got darker.

Sunday we were scheduled to take a train back to London but the elderly cab driver taking us to the Cardiff train station had to go to London to pick up a fare and offered to take us most of the way.  We accepted and he ended up driving us all the way to the Strand Palace.  We checked in and then hurried off to see How Howie met Sally, an adequate play. 

Monday we relaxed and saw Simon Gray's The Old Masters, probably the best of the 9 plays we saw.

A real neat  trip.