{"id":285,"date":"2018-10-25T22:08:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T02:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.messysuitcase.com\/index.php\/2018\/10\/25\/london-part-1\/"},"modified":"2018-10-25T22:08:00","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T02:08:00","slug":"london-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/messysuitcase.com\/index.php\/2018\/10\/25\/london-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"London, Part 1: A Great International City"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How do I begin to describe London<\/a>? International, sophisticated. Incredibly diverse, both ethnically and culturally. Royal and earthy. Multi-faceted. Surprisingly, a foodie\u2019s paradise.<\/div>\n

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\nWe got lucky in London: Perfect weather \u2013 mostly sunny, in the 50s and 60s every single day. None of foggy London\u2019s famous wetness whatsoever. Perfect location: A reasonably-priced two-bedroom flat just two blocks from Kensington Gardens, and two blocks from two subway stations on different lines. <\/div>\n
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\nWe also got lucky by scoring Hamilton tickets. <\/div>\n
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\nSo after a few days visiting our oldest child Aryk at Keele University in Newcastle-Under-Lyme, we drove 120 miles to London, a steering-wheel-gripping, teeth-clenching journey on the wrong side of the road through several traffic jams that took almost four hours and severely tested our marriage. After handing off the car to Europcar with relief, we happily relied on public transport for our five days in London.<\/div>\n
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\nFirst Up: The London Eye<\/b><\/h4>\n

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We booked a combo ticket of the London <\/a>Eye <\/a> and a Thames River Cruise because adding the boat ride cost just 6 pounds ($9 US). It was glorious! In 65-degree sun, we sat on the deck of a smallish boat and took in the sights of London from the river, enjoying witty, drily British commentary from our guide, John. It gave us a great lay of the land as we beheld the Tower Bridge, the Parliament Building and Big Ben (covered in scaffolding), the original site of the London Bridge, Royal Albert Hall, the Jubilee Bridge, Cleopatra\u2019s Needle<\/a>, the replica of Shakespeare\u2019s Globe Theater<\/a>,  London\u2019s orb-shaped glass City Hall, and a number of shiny new high-rises such as the Walkie Talkie Building with its Sky Garden<\/a>,  the Shard<\/a>, and one with what looked like a generous backside that John nicknamed it \u201cKim Kardashian.\u201d<\/div>\n

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\nWhen we got to the queue for the London Eye, Lexie looked up, shivered, and reminded me of a crucial fact that I had stupidly forgotten: she is afraid of the heights. So, 25 pounds ($33) squandered, the rest of us enjoyed the ride to the sky while Lexie waited in a park. <\/div>\n
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The London Eye is ridiculously, blatantly touristy and over-the-top, but nevertheless worth every penny for the incomparable views from its slowly rotating cylinders. The structure of the Eye makes it even more interesting. You can\u2019t take a bad picture from it.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Hamilton and Zizzi\u2019s, and then Zizzi\u2019s again<\/b><\/h4>\n
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\nThat evening we went to see Hamilton, an event we have been dreaming about for several years. Lexie, Aryk and I have been Lin-Manuel Miranda fans since we discovered In The Heights<\/i>, his first Tony-award-winning musical about an immigrant neighborhood in northern Manhattan, 2008. We bought and listened to the soundtrack 100 times, saw it at Denver Center for the Performing Arts (DCPA) and at several local theaters, and were really excited when Hamilton<\/i> came out. <\/div>\n
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\nSimilarly enthralled by its story and its ingenious blend of hip-hop and classic musical theater, we were dying to see it but failed to snag tickets in the lottery when it came to DCPA  or during a trip to NY in March. Luckily, I happened upon an article that said Hamilton<\/i> was coming to London. A Google search revealed that a new batch of tickets had been released sale the day before, and I got three in the 11th row for just 400 pounds ($130) each. <\/div>\n
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\nThe show surpassed expectations, and we were ecstatic to experience it. Afterward, we had a late dinner at Zizzi\u2019s, an Italian Restaurant near the theater, where we had incredibly memorable dessert \u2013 melt-in-your-mouth tiramisu and a divine chocolate caramel brownie. <\/div>\n
\n(We returned to Zizzi\u2019s several days later for an encore presentation of the same scrumptious desserts.)<\/div>\n
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\nAltogether a  spectacular night!<\/div>\n
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\nNext .. London, Part 2: Harry Potter!<\/i><\/div>\n
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How do I begin to describe London? International, sophisticated. Incredibly diverse, both ethnically and culturally. Royal and earthy. Multi-faceted. Surprisingly, a foodie\u2019s paradise. We got lucky in London: Perfect weather \u2013 mostly sunny, in the 50s and 60s every single day. None of foggy London\u2019s famous wetness whatsoever. Perfect location: A reasonably-priced two-bedroom flat just … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “London, Part 1: A Great International City”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[152,137,194,154,12,5],"class_list":["post-285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-england","tag-europe","tag-hamilton","tag-london","tag-travel","tag-travel-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/messysuitcase.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/messysuitcase.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/messysuitcase.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messysuitcase.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messysuitcase.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/messysuitcase.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/messysuitcase.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messysuitcase.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messysuitcase.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}