Blair in London

The week before last Blair was lucky enough to come to London and stay at Hotel Catchpole, where his big sis and brother-in-law proceeded to take excellent care of him, while seeing some sights as well. Having had dinner at Brick Lane as his first introduction to Britain, we continued a gastronomic theme by taking him to Borough Markets. This was just a stop on the way to our destination of Shakespeare's globe, where we bought groundling (i.e. standing) tickets for that evenings performance.

Blair and Sarah outside the Globe

The sensible thing to do before 3 hours standing to watch Shakespeare would be to sit around sipping tea, but we defied sense and took a flying tour around St Pauls, Harrods, Hyde Park (featuring an animated discussion on the merits of neocolonialism at speakers' corner) and Buckingham Palace.

Blair sees his first Harrods price-tag

Shakespeare (in this case King Lear) at the globe is a brilliant experience. We'd all studied it at school but I don't think we quite got it like you get it in the flesh, with 16th century production style. We got there early and were so close that we could have touched the actors, and had to be wary of the sword tips lest we join poor Gloucester. Absolutely amazing.

This was how close we were...

The pre-show entertainment as the theatre filled up

Monday we were fortunate enough to have a bank (public) holiday, and Thorsten (Stephen's workmate) and his wife Simei joined us on a jaunt up to Bleinheim Palace, just near Oxford. It is a beautiful house with lovely grounds.

Blair very quickly made friends with the local constabulary

The house and one of the formal gardens

Thorsten and Simei strolling the lawns - unfortunately the weather turned on us for a bit...

Blair and Sarah by the 'Cascades'

The highlight (for the boys at least) was the jousting. Four guys, on real horses, with real (rubber tipped) lances going for it - it was as scripted as WWF, but with big swords swinging around you weren't going to call them on it.

One of the Knights

Jousting

Blenheim was also the childhood home of Winston Churchill, and having heard how his ancestor saved the British army it suddenly made more sense that he had set himself apart and saw himself somehow more destined for greatness.

Sarah took the next couple of days off to show Blair around, and Tuesday night we were lucky enough to get £16.50 tickets for Les Miserables, which were upgraded so we were sitting in the 3rd row of the dress circle. The show was even better the second time around.

The week flew by, but all too soon Blair was off on his next big adventure, travelling Europe with his friends from Uni exchange in Canada. We're not going to have to miss him for too long, though, since provided STA get his ticket sorted soon we'll have him back in about 3 weeks!