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Published: August 8th 2007
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The A.M. Hook Up Can’t leave London without a West End Show. Time to join all the other frugal tourists at the Half Price booth in Leicester Square at 10am. Only, the concession, or discount, tickets for Monty Python’s Spamalot are only sold at the Palace Theatre. Thus, this is our destination at 10am.
No one is there to form a queue! This must be our lucky day. Since it is a few minutes before 10am, I leave Meli at the box office and explore a bit, basically retracing some of my steps from the last time I was in London. I locate all the necessities: internet café, Häagen-Dazs, STA Travel. I report my findings. When the box office opens, the guy tells us that Spamalot is still hot and they have not yet begun to offer concession tickets. He whips out a seating chart and we point to the nosebleed section for £15, but ponder the £20 seat. Type, type, type…wait a moment. “Are you willing to spend £10 more for seats in Row D (four rows from the stage)? We have two last minute cancellations.” Those tickets generally sell for £55 and we luck out paying only £30.
CHARGE IT! These are concession tickets, as we just saved $100. Frugal? No. Smart.
Feed me Seymour The trip to STA is to plan a weekend getaway with Bettina, who, along with Mamu and Bob, is meeting us in Paris. They come up with nothing better than what we found on our own. Brekkie time. The goal is to find a place offering the Full English Breakfast for under £4. Our search lasts about an hour, down Shaftesbury, through Leicester Square, wave at Trafalgar Square, up Hartman, to Piccadilly Circus, up Piccadilly, cross to Regent, left at Princes Street into Bar Remo. Great food. Large amounts of it. Best prices we’ve encountered so far. Onwards to Oxford Street for shopping. Meli needs clothes for her presentation.
Suffering to find Selfridges We’ve been blanked in the ‘Ppines, Vietnam, and Thailand. London was to play backup, reserved for the most desperate of situations. We’re desperate. Do you know how much a Tube ticket costs…scale up to clothes. Following the suggestion of the concierge and the guidebook, we head to Regent Street and Oxford Street. I am beyond underwhelmed by the sense of fashion I’ve seen on the street so far,
The British Museum
The world's oldest museum, established in 1753. just one man’s opinion, and further humored by the loud, bizarre, sequenced, stripped, pleated mix of haberdashery on the racks in the department stores. I can’t send my baby off to present at a conference of future colleagues wearing this. I just can’t. Regardless, we have to find something.
An hour in John Lewis, the sophisticated department store with a large and loyal clientele that prides itself on being “never knowingly undersold”, results in a wasted sixty minutes. We’ll never get those back. Not trying to diss them, we just didn’t find anything that matched our tastes. Window shopping along Oxford lands us in Naram Carmicie (Italy’s premier shirt & knit specialist). Meli tries on too many shirts, reminiscent of the leather coat shopping in Argentina. The sales people keep pulling out shirts. They would not let us leave without a purchase. Remember again from Argentina, we love non-annoying persistence. SUCCESS! It is now time to find an electronic razor for me. Naram Carmicie had mirrors everywhere and I looked like my mama didn’t love me anymore. My shaver died in Vietnam, so it’s been more than two weeks since I’ve shaved. There is taco meat growing under my
The British Museum
Where are the clouds, London? chin. The guy in Naram Carmicie sends us to Boots. In Boots, they have a good selection, but I’m partial to Wahl clippers. “They sell Wahl in Suffragist and John Lewis for sure,” says the Indian salesman. Hmm. Suffragist, or is that Suffrages, or perhaps Sulfridges. I ask him to repeat himself. “John Lewis and Suffragist; it’s right across the street.” He adds that the brands they carry in Boots are not favorable for African male hair. I tell him that I have used the Remington with good results, but he insists that I not buy anything they sold there.
OH! Meli and I look at each other. “Selfridges!” It’s one of those “you had to be there moments”, but we get a good chuckle out of seeing the sign. So that’s what he was saying. Selfridges is nice with designer names plastered everywhere. They do have Wahl clippers, but I don’t find the ones I want (i.e., cheap Wahl clippers). I only need something for the rest of the trip and am not willing to spend £20. Twenty bucks (in $) is more reasonable. Back at Boots, the Indian guy sees me and asks what happened. Again, he
The British Museum
Glass Canopy of The Great Court tells me not to buy what they have because I won’t be satisfied. Having explained myself to him before, now I am irritated—the failed venture plus his annoying persistence—and tell him to go stick his head in a hole in the ground and waved him off. I buy the £10 Boots brand clippers.
Have Flip, will Spam The walk from Oxford Circus to the British Museum takes almost an hour. We stop in a Kodak store to download the pictures from Meli’s camera card. Her camera has been out of commission for a couple of days; we think it’s because of the sand from the desert safari in Dubai, although searches on the Internet make her wonder if it’s just a battery and shutter malfunction. It would have sucked to lose those pictures. The tour of the museum is just the highlights: the Rosetta Stone, Parthenon and Greek exhibit, Egyptian collection including the mummified cat and other mummified animals, and Aztec mosaics. We do it in 90 minutes flat. It has already been a long day of shopping and we still have tickets to Spamalot for later this evening. We take an early dinner of fish and chips (noticing
The British Museum
Colossal granite statue of Rameses II (c1275 BC) from his memorial temple in Thebes. a trend) and a hearty burger at The Plough with Stella and S. Ice.
A day is not complete without some sort of internet action. Earlier in the day I scoped out a spot for £1 for the first hour and free wireless. Sans laptops, we pay the tariff and do the deed. At 8pm, we are comfortably seated in the 4th row at the Palace Theater for Spamalot. Aside from the uber obnoxious “I’ve never seen anything funny in my life so I’ll piss off everyone with my hyena laughter” Brit chick one row in front of us, it is a great show. I fart in your general direction!
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sOL
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Egypt and Mexico got jacked!
I think it's time to give back the artifacts. London is stealing from everyone. Give my people back their history! (Unless it's a traveling show then I retract my last comment) sOL