London, Day 2

Today was another exciting day in London. The rain wasn't too bad today - just a drizzle here and there and one huge downpour in the afternoon.

This morning we started our day by taking the Tube to Notting Hill (mind the gap!). We spent several hours walking through the endless array of vendors at Portobello Market. The market comes to life on Fridays and Saturdays and is primarily known for the antiques. The food and produce area of the market was amazing. We never did find the blue door for the travel bookshop. Oh well.

This afternoon we visited the National Gallery museum . We have seen so much religious artwork in Italy and Paris that we very quickly walked through that section to get to the great Impressionism exhibit they have through the end of May. There was an entire room of only Monet's work along with several other rooms with Renoir, Manet, Pisarro, Picasso, as well as many others. Outside the Musee d'Orsay in Paris this was the biggest selection of Impressionist artwork we have seen, although this was the best display of Monet's work including a couple of the Water Lilies.

Next we spent some time walking around Covent Gardens, which is another market that is mostly covered, a welcome blessing given the nearly constant drizzle. There are several performers around doing skits, playing instruments, or singing. Great place to sit and do some people watching. We had tickets for a play tonight at a theater that was only a couple of minutes walk from Covent Gardens so we decided to get some dinner at a quaint little restaurant called La Boheme, right across the street from the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.

The best part of our day was seeing Lord of the Rings play tonight. The play has not even officially opened yet. The play opened for preview on the 9th of May and will has the official opening in June. We had seats in the center about 2/3rd up the bottom stalls. The set was unbelievable and the cast was very good. We both thought that the actor playing Gollum did the best job at bringing the character to life. The play lasted 3 hours with one 10 min intermission and another 5 minute pseudo-intermission that consisted mostly of Orcs scaring the pants off various audience members. It was difficult at first to not expect the same scenes and exact story as the movies. There were some differences in the story line but the producers did a great job in bringing the overall storyline to life on stage. The special effects done with the Nazgul (black riders), Shelob (spider), and Orcs was really good.