Tuesday 29 May 2012

Monday's London Diary

Hello everyone!

Well that’s me back from my wee holiday and I had a great time, it was really nice to get away from everything for a few days. I’ve decided to just treat my London blogs as a kind of holiday diary for what I did each day instead of splitting it up into different activities because I think that would feel really disjointed and messy so here is the diary entry for Monday May 21st 2012.



I have never been a fan of flying, I’m not scared about it, I just get really sick on planes and always throw up when the plane is landing which can put a bit of a downer on the start and end of the holiday so since London was accessible by train, my friend and I decided to travel first class with East Coast trains instead. This made getting to London a lot easier as the train station is only a 20 minute drive from my house instead of a two hour drive to the nearest airport, the journey time is a lot longer (six hours on the train compared to an hour and a half on the aeroplane). Unfortunately my friend and I were left a bit disappointed with the first class service as you are supposed to receive a complimentary hot meal but the kitchen was broken and so we only got a couple of sandwiches, we also had the same problem on the return journey but this time we didn’t receive hot food or hot drinks. We have both written letters of complaint to East Coast so I’ll keep you posted on whether we receive any compensation for this or not. At the end of the day if a company promises a service then it should provide it, especially if you pay extra money to receive the services. Anyway! The rest of the journey went smoothly except from my friend getting travel sick but all in all it was a pleasant journey.

After arriving in London we transferred to the St. Giles Hotel at Tottenham Court Road. Both of us had stayed here before so we knew what to expect. This is a great hotel if you’re looking for a clean and comfortable nights rest, it’s not the Ritz, it’s not very luxurious and the rooms are small but the staff are friendly, the breakfast is good and it’s in a great location. If you have been to London before you will know the hotels there can be dirty and overpriced or treat you like cattle (The Royal National being one of them) so to find a hotel as good as the St. Giles within a reasonable price range can be quite difficult. If you ever visit London I highly recommend the St. Giles and warn you greatly to stay away from The Royal National but these views are just based on my experiences.

We decided to go to a musical on the Monday we arrived and so we headed into Leicester Square to get discounted tickets. We decided to see We Will Rock You which is a musical based on the music of Queen and we also bought tickets for Rock of Ages for the Thursday night. We had both seen We Will Rock You before but had really enjoyed it so we decided to go again. My friend had seen Rock of Ages as well but there wasn’t really that much else on that was discounted that we wanted to see and since the film is coming out in two weeks we decided to go to that too.

We then headed back to the hotel as it was right next to the Dominion theatre where We Will Rock you is and got a quick bite to eat in the Garfunkels next door.

We Will Rock You Review

This musical is one of my favourites as I am a huge Queen fan so you can guess this is going to be a pretty favourable review. We Will Rock You is set in the future on the iPlanet formerly known as planet Earth where making your own music with instruments has been banned and the only songs allowed have to be made on computers. The planet is heavily ruled by the Killer Queen who makes sure everything runs like clockwork. Life is easy and uncomplicated unless you are one of the few remaining bohemians who rebel against the regime and suffer greatly for this. Enter our heroes of the story, a guy named Galileo Figaro and a girl named Scaramouche (see the Queen references already?), two bohemian outcasts who are shunned by society for not fitting in and being different. They run away from their home where they come across a larger group of bohemians at the Heartbreak Hotel who believe that Galileo is the one person who can bring music back into their lives. They then embark on a voyage to find the last remaining instrument which has been hidden ever since electronic music took over.



Although this musical can seem a bit ridiculous at times, the music and atmosphere are great. They also update this musical regularly by renaming the planet (it was known as Planet Mall until this year when it was changed to the iPlanet to reflect Apples market domination) and by keeping the names of those musicians that have died up to date, this year’s names included Whitney Houston and Amy Winehouse. I also really enjoy this musical as it’s very sarcastic which might not be to everyone’s taste but the humour is pretty clean with only a few innuendos used throughout. Overall this musical would probably be suitable for anyone over 12 unlike Rock of Ages which I will come to later in the week. If you’re a Queen fan or into rock music then this musical will definitely be right up your street.

Score: 8/10

So there is my first day’s diary entry, there wasn’t really all that much to say as most og Monday was spent travelling but hopefully you will have at least found the review interesting.

As always if you have any questions feel free to ask me in the comment section below and until Tuesdays diary entry TTFN Ta-Ta For Now x

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