(this narrative began from when I first landed in London on September 3, 2016)
Wednesday
September 28 and Thursday September 29, 2016:
Today (Wednesday), we had to get up early again (for
me, 6:30 am), have breakfast at 7:30 am (for me, 7:15 am), get the baggage out
the door by 7:30 am, and leave Stratford-upon-Avon headed for London, our final
destination, at 8:30 am. Tonight, a
small group from our tour is scheduled to go to dinner and to the theatre
together! Like six others in my group,
I’d chosen to go to “Kinky Boots”, mainly because I have no idea what this show
is all about and because I rarely, if ever, go to the theatre, certainly not on
my own. It should be a very interesting
evening in any event.
We visited Blenheim Palace this morning, birthplace
of Sir Winston Churchill, and had a tour with a local guide through the public
part of the palace. We were then free to
wander through the palace’s formal gardens and marvel at the beautiful
surrounding landscape and river nearby.
Picture-taking was a given. If we
wanted to eat something, food was available in the palace’s café. By the time we arrived at our hotel, the
Hilton London Metropole, it was about 3:30 pm.
This is where John Hood, our tour director, and Joe Brenan, our driver,
would part from the group. Tonight, we
will be looked after by our local Globus guide, Stephanie, and a local driver.
The other show people chose was “Beautiful”
featuring the hit songs of Carole King.
Both “Kinky Boots” and “Beautiful” are examples of live musical theatre,
and, as I’ve already said, I don’t go to the theatre very often, if at
all. There were maybe twenty people
altogether on this outing – some of them were from other tours and were picked
up on the way to dinner at the Park Plaza hotel. We were all taken by Stephanie and her bus
and driver, to a tiny café called “Brasserie Blanc”, I believe. We had a drink and a delicious dinner there
and then we were taken to our individual theatre locations – first to
“Beautiful” and then to “Kinky Boots”.
The start time for both was 7:30 pm.
We were to be picked afterward by Stephanie and her bus and driver,
first the group at “Kinky Boots”, which finished at 10:00 pm and then the group
at “Beautiful”, which finished at 10:10 pm.
Everyone was then dropped off at their respective hotels – first the
group at the Park Plaza hotel, then us at our hotel, the Hilton London
Metropole.
I must say that I think I am now hooked on
theatre! This musical was very funny and
toward the end, involved the audience in its antics. I was completely enchanted. I loved the “Kinky Boots” storyline and the
fact that there were gay / transgender men in this musical. These guys were very feminine-looking, but
were actually men! They dressed like
women, looked like women, and even sounded somewhat like women. The lead male actor who played Lola was Matt
Henry. None of us had known what this
musical was about beforehand, but we were all blown away by the quality of the
singing, dancing and acting in “Kinky Boots”.
The people who saw “Beautiful” said their musical evening was also
excellent, but I doubt that their show was nearly as interesting or kinky as
“Kinky Boots” was!
Today (Thursday) is our last morning together. Our tour group is getting ready to return to
their respective countries that they call “home”, but some of us have planned
more tours, like me. For example,
Carolyn and Bob Croke from Australia are going to Dubai, the United Arab
Emirates on another tour. And, Don and
Shirley Birkall from the USA are going on a tour of Australia and New
Zealand. I think Don and Shirley are
going home to North Carolina first, but Carolyn and Bob are probably going
straight to Dubai from London. Dubai is
much closer to London than any of the cities in Australia.
For myself, I have another tour starting on October
2nd, and in the meantime, I have to fly today via British Airways to
Paris, France where the second tour begins.
As it turns out, the flight itself was uneventful and very short (one
hour and ten minutes), but the wait to get through the border police inspection
was very long (one hour) because there were way too few border policemen
working at that time for the number of people coming off this flight. Then, I had to take a taxi to my hotel in Paris,
the Mercure Paris Centre Tour Eiffel, which is close to the Eiffel Tower. My taxi ride, which was supposed to take
fifty minutes, took over an hour due to heavy traffic. I’ll be staying here a total of four
nights: I will pay for two nights myself
and the other two nights are prepaid via Globus.
Even though I arrived on September 29th,
the other people booked on this second tour will start arriving soon: Maree, Kitty, and Jeremiah (from my first
tour who are also on this tour) are coming to Paris via the Eurostar train on
September 30th, and the other people on my second tour will be arriving on
either September 30th or October 1st. We will all meet our new tour director at
6:00 pm on October 2nd and take a cruise together on the Seine River
as our opening adventure in Paris. I
believe dinner is also included in this first evening together.
I am so looking forward to this new
tour. I want to see how continental
Europe has changed in the last thirty-five years, but I also want to see some
familiar destinations of the past, like Lake Lucerne, Switzerland; Florence,
Rome and Venice, Italy; and Amsterdam, Netherlands. I want to see some new cities in Switzerland,
Italy, Germany, and Belgium that I hadn’t seen before on my tour in 1981. All in all, I think that there will be enough
that’s different this time round for me.
Of course, things will have changed – time has that effect
naturally. What will be interesting is
to see how time has effected change.
As far as I can tell, I know that computer technology has changed things
a lot everywhere, but that’s only part of the story. You’ll have to wait to read the rest of this
story.
copyright 2016 - Anne Shier
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