Day 4: Last Evening in London
It was our last evening in London, and we had to make it count.
With my legs already hurting, we walked the short trip from the Covent Garden area into the British Museum.
Unlike the earlier art we saw, we found the British Museum highly interesting, because it was full of artifacts from ancient civilization. From the Egyptian wing, we saw the Rosetta Stone, the Sphinx’s beard, a huge arm, and tons of hieroglyphics. We also saw beautiful art from the Assyrian civilization, as well as evidence of the oldest recorded game ever, the Royal Game of Ur. The museum had an official looking board of this game, as well as thousands year old scratches of the Ur board game on other royal artifacts which were supposed to be protected by the royal guards. I guess they needed a pastime as well!
I was starting to get really grumpy from having achy legs, so we stopped and had some coffee before going around again. After our short stop, we made our way to the Soho district (which was full of sex shops, not that we entered one mind you) before going to the Sugar Reef, the restaurant with our free meal as part of the Spamalot tickets.
Sugar Reef is a classy restaurant in between at the West End near Piccadilly Circus – we had easily the second best meal of our entire trip there, just after our Browns brunch with Nicky and Vane. Sugar Reef served good food, decently priced wine (at the happy hour from 5-8pm, that is), and the wait staff seemed perpetually cheerful.
Then it was off to the Palace Theatre for the main event of the evening – Monthy Python’s Spamalot! Spamalot is a play “lovingly ripped off from ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’”, according to the literature. Spamalot is a rip-off of a re-telling of the Athurian legend, which may or may not be true – but all the derivations aside, it managed to be an original work in itself. What’s more, the play was well-executed, and hilariously funny from start to finish. I’m not about to give away any spoilers here, but if you’re the type who wants to watch a play at the West End but gets bored/sleepy at the usual plays, you might want to catch Spamalot instead.
After Spamalot, we were supposed to go to the pub with Nicky and Vane for a nightcap before parting ways – we leaving London at 6:15AM the next day. So we said our goodbyes at the Kensington Underground station instead, and Mench and I walked home to easyHotel for our final night. And that concluded our first leg of the honeymoon trip in London. We were so tired that we were barely able to fix our stuff for the next day before plopping down to sleep. Next stop, beautiful Paris!
