Happy December! The month of Christmas is upon us; lights, presents and chocolate everyday from the Advent calendar! Last week and the start of this week feel like I am finally starting to settle into London. I’m commuting like a regular (including forgetting once or twice to tap in with my Oyster card…whoops) cooking in my flat kitchen and checking things off my master list of London to dos.
We didn’t get snow in London, but boy oh boy did it get cold last week! This post from Runaway Kiki pretty much sums it up. Also buzzfeed reminded us all that ‘Love Actually’ came out TWELVE years ago. Reading this made me so excited to be in London for this holiday season.
I went to one of my favorite spots in London last week for dinner: Bone Daddies in Soho. Even though they don’t have my old favorite dish, it’s still ridiculously delicious. I ordered the spicy miso ramen per my waiter’s suggestion and it was amazing.
On Saturday I saw ‘Miss Saigon‘ in the West End. This has been on my show bucket list for quite a while, but I’ve never had the opportunity to see the show in the states. London is currently seeing out the end of a run of a brand new production before it hops across the pond to Broadway. I was familiar with the storyline and music prior to seeing the performance (it’s one of my mom’s favorites!) but I still cried. I’m always leery with re-stagings and would like to read a comparison of this with the original. That being said the story of ‘Miss Saigon’ is beautiful and I’ve been singing the songs ever since seeing the show! Interestingly the original female lead was Lea Salonga, aka the voice of Princess Jasmine in ‘Aladdin’. You know my love of ‘Aladdin’ so I was giddy at discovering this fact.
‘Miss Saigon’ is currently at the Prince Edward Theatre. The interior is gorgeous with an art deco feel, rich wood and dark red design. The stage is designed to be very open and tall, giving the feeling of a large performing space. I sat towards the rear of the stalls (orchestra) level and there is honestly not one bad seat in the section.
On Sunday I met up with Gail to check out the Southbank Christmas Market. With the cold and some rain it was a bit of a bust but the company was fantastic. We ended up walking all the way east along the Thames to Tower Bridge and grabbed a pub lunch and warm up from the hike.
Have a happy week!
