In Which We Go to England: Part 6

One of these days I'm going to start a blog post by saying "Here we are in Utah" but it's not quite time for that yet. Still, our return is starting to loom up on the horizon, and we have just under two weeks left here. I wouldn't say the time has necessarily gone speeding by (or dragging by), but I'm still surprised that it's getting closer to that time.

But! It's not that time yet, and we had several adventures this week. Let's get down to business.

• Last week we went to see Into the Woods at Regent's Park, but the show was rained out before it could start. This past Tuesday we made a second attempt, and we made it about 15 minutes into act 2 when it started to drizzle. Drizzle turned into a downpour and back home we went. Some might describe it as "agony."
• We took the next night off, but on Thursday after another stop at Harrod's we went back to try to catch the second act. After a lot of poking around the closed up entrances, a kindly usher took pity on us and let us in during intermission. It drizzled the entire act, but we made it through at last!
  
• On Friday we had an ice cream party with Caity and Friends. The ice cream here is delicious. I probably shouldn't say how many cartons we've gone through in the last few weeks, but I will say that we bought two more tonight (2 for 3 pounds! How can we resist?). Also, Friends is on here for hours at a time, on two different channels, so we've watched quite a lot of it. Good times.
• Saturday started out with a run, then our first foray into Portobello Road, which was a kind of pleasant insanity. We came out of it with just some pastries, a giant hot dog and some peaches that went bad way too soon. Also, we may not be able to complain about Walmart crowds ever again.
• We had plans to go to St. Paul's and then meet some visiting friends for dinner and Phantom of the Opera. When we got back from the market, we picked up our newly-arrived theatre tickets and...realized they were for the matinee show, which started in 15 minutes. So...no St. Paul's for us as we spent the rest of the afternoon trying to contact the 24 hour customer service people (no go) and hunt for more tickets in Piccadilly. The end result is that we found four more tickets, though in two different places, and we met up with Liza and Kent no problem. Unfortunately we have not a single picture of them until they send us their pictures.
  
• Speaking of Phantom of the Opera, we saw it from our spots in the very back row of the whole theatre, but it wasn't as bad a view as it sounds. The cast was kind of so-so, but they probably would have sounded better if the orchestra hadn't been racing for the finish line. We both agreed that the show could use a little updating in the costumes and effects. Shooting "fireballs" from a staff are just not as impressive as they were in the 80s.
• On Sunday we went to Kew Gardens and explored them for about 5 hours. It was overcast the whole time, but it never rained and we saw many exciting plants and trees. We also saw this little friend:

• He was just running about the greenhouse, and then he stayed put for about ten people to pet him and take pictures. He was an unexpected highlight, but there were many other lovely sights to see.

• We wrapped up our weekend with pizza, more ice cream and Project Runway. We just love a good old fashioned pizza party.
  

And thus was our week. We are coming to the end of our to-do list, and we're steadily checking things off. Next weekend is still an enigma. Will we go to York? Or Brighton? Will we just stay in and watch Dear John? Only this weekend knows for sure!