My sister and I made our way to the Tate Modern yesterday afternoon and spent the better part of it there looking at the exhibits and the huge collection they have. When trying to reach there, we took the tube to Waterloo, which, for some reason we thought for sure was on the north bank. Not so much, so we ended up walking along the waterfront for some 20-odd minutes trying to find the building.
The Tate currently has a slide installed exhibit (aka the ones from the park when you were a kid) that are 5 stories high. You apparently reach 28 mph if you use the highest one and have to wear elbow and knee pads. I didn’t get to try them since there was a half-hour queue to get a ticket to go on, but watching people fly through them was pretty interesting.
We had lunch near the Old Globe and then walked across the Millennium Bridge towards St. Pauls and had a coffee at Paul (i.e. the French bakery) and made our way back to her place afterwards. We ended up going to the grocery store in the evening and bought stuff to make monster nachos, which were in fact monster.
Today I left the house early and went to the Palace Theatre at Shaftsberry to get tickets to see Spamalot tonight. The show doesn’t participate in the TKTS program (along with Wicked and a few others), so I had to buy them full priced and got balcony seats for 20 pounds each. Not terrible, but we’ll have to see how the seats here. After that I walked through Picadally Circus. While walking through the West-end I stumbled upon Chinatown and found a 中国银行 branch! I stopped in and asked the teller if I could use my mainland China issued card to buy GBP. She got a big laugh out of the fact that I had the card and said unfortunately, no.
After walking through Regents Street, I cut past Carnaby Street and got to Soho in order to make my way to the Microsoft office here in Soho. For a while I was quite lost in the area since a lot of the streets looked the same and it’s been two+ years since I’d been to this office. I finally found my way when I stumbled upon a street where there were a lot of sex shops and the like (as the office is a block from there), which is the legacy of the old red-light district that Soho used to be. I plugged in my laptop (pictures are finished syncing now) and got lunch with an friend from the office here.
It’s after lunch now, and I’m heading back to Russell Square to meet my sister’s friend until she’s done with school. After that, it’s on to Spamalot!