May 4 – London Theater and a Pedi-cab Ride

We had an easy morning.  We had breakfast in the basement breakfast room and had a lazy morning in the room.

Late in the morning we took the Tube down to Leicester Square where we bought theater tickets for Mama Mia.  It is a long running musical that we had somehow never seen.  We then headed out to find some lunch.  The area around the ticket office was obviously Little Italy…tons of Italian restaurants.  Since we had just spent a week in Italy we opted for another restaurant.  This one had a variety of food but, for us, the most notable part was that the restaurant seemed to be a party place.  There were at least three birthday groups with cakes and singing in the hour we were there. 

Then we trekked down to the theater, settled in, and watched a wonderful show. 

There were multiple curtain calls and several encores with the company singing additional ABBA songs.

Outside the theater after the show there we a lot of pedicabs waiting to hopefully pick up theater goers.  Most of them were decked out in brightly colored fuzzy fabrics, mostly in hot pink.  Looked like a Barbie convention.

We decided to pick a cab and signed up for a half hour drive to wherever he would take us.  At the half hour mark we added another 15 minutes.  He wandered around the area and we road by many neighborhoods…

and number of familiar places like the London Eye,

Elizabeth Tower (Big Ben),

and Trafalgar Square.

And we even road by a Krishna Temple with a lot of devotees gathered outside.

 We saw a lot of red Chinese paper lanterns.

We ended our fun (but chilly) trip at Charing Cross station.  The stall doors at the women’s room at Charing Cross were certainly decked out.

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More London
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We caught the tube back to South Kensington and from there we walked to a nearby Gourmet Burger Kitchen.  It is one of our go-to restaurants in London because they have such great milkshakes.  At least, they used to.  While the shakes are still good they obviously changed them…no more little chocolate chunks.  Too bad.

Then we walked back to the hotel.  It was a great day.