Today started with a ride to the south side of the Thames and our first theater of the day – Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. While waiting for it to open, we walked a few blocks to the site of the original Globe theater where Shakespeare would have performed. There’s nothing there but a metal plaque in the ground, which is why this wasn’t a 3-theater day.
The original Globe Theater was built in 1599, destroyed by fire in 1613, rebuilt in 1614 and demolished in 1644. The current Globe Theater was built in 1997, spearheaded by American actor and filmmaker Sam Wanamaker. An interesting factoid, Sam’s daughter Zoe is also an actress and had the role of Madame Hooch in the first Harry Potter movie. She was the witch who taught the kids to fly.
Anyway, back to the theater. It was built in the same style it had been built in the 16th century, with wooden pegs instead of nails.
Just like in Shakespeare’s time, people buy tickets to stand in the area around the stage. If you want to spend more, you can buy a seat in the covered section.
We saw an original of the compilation of Shakespeare’s plays. He wrote 36 plays and only half of them had ever been published. So, without this book, we would have lost 18 of his plays including Romeo and Juliet and MacBeth. I’m not a big Shakespeare fan but even I think that would have been a terrible loss. Of course, if we didn’t know they had been written, we wouldn’t have known what we lost, but….
We saw the costume “Queen Elizabeth I” wore in the play with Queen Elizabeth II in the audience. Apparently, QEI came into the theater and bowed to QEII, who bowed back to her. Pretty cool story.
The girls had a chance to sit in the coronation chair used in the play Richard III. The original chair is in Westminster Abbey.
It was a very interesting one-hour tour. The guide told great stories about the theater and the Elizabethan times.
Then we headed to Southwark Cathedral just a short distance away. Peter and I tried to see that in 2022, but it was closed for a college graduation ceremony.
It’s not a huge church as cathedrals go, but it’s very beautiful.
This window was made in honor of John Harvard who founded Harvard University. He was baptized in this church in 1607.
We saw the church fox who wasn’t the least bit interested in any of us.
The original William was also in the garden.
We headed back to our side of the river for lunch. We wanted to go to a pub, but we were too hungry to hunt for one, so we ended up at Pizza Express across the street from the hotel. It’s a chain restaurant, and while not the best pizza I’ve ever eaten, it’s not bad.
After lunch we dropped our stuff off at the hotel and headed out for our second theater of the day, The Victoria Palace Theater, where I surprised the girls with tickets for Hamilton. This is where we started our changing of the guard tour yesterday and we talked about how we would love to see the show. I checked on tickets yesterday and was happy to see that their matinee performance is Thursday not Wednesday. We didn’t have anything special planned for this afternoon, so I thought why not. I talked with Christina before I bought the tickets, and she also thought it was a good idea. We didn’t tell the girls until lunch and they were very excited. Actually, all four of us are BIG Hamilton fans so we were all very excited.
We had great seats, only 14 rows back.
This was Nora’s first real theater experience, and she was absolutely mesmerized. Of course, she’d seen it many times on Disney+ as Drew is a fanatic, but Nora usually falls asleep before it’s over, so she didn’t really know how it ended. She wasn’t happy that both Alexander and Phillip died but she still loved the show. It was fabulous production, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing it for the 2nd time.
Tomorrow, we have another theater experience as Nora and I are seeing Frozen while Christina and Drew are seeing Six, The Musical. It will be a great way to end our incredible 2-week European Adventure. But that’s tomorrow. Speaking of tomorrow, I may not get post done until I’m sitting in the airport Saturday morning as we’re going to have a late night and a 6:15am pickup on Saturday. So, don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me. Have a great night everyone!
Sounds like you had a wonderful adventure and I actually am exhausted from reading about it and gained ten pounds from the pastries! Great job Lynn. Safe travels home.
Damn, girl you are fast. I only posted this 5 minutes ago! It’s been an amazing 2 weeks with the girls; I’ll treasure the memories forever. See you soon.
What an incredible day! I can only imagine the girls’ faces when you told them they were going to see Hamilton IN LONDON!!! How special is that? And such great seats, too!
I was at the Globe Theatre in April 2017 — a black tie awards ceremony there! Was so much fun walking through the halls (in a gown! 🤣) and seeing the costumes and sets! You had a much better view than I did!
Pizza Express was my go to for awhile! First place I ever had Hawaiian pizza! Not too bad!
Enjoy tomorrow! You’ve created memories to last forever! Thanks for sharing the adventure with us! See you (and Andy and Annette) soon, I hope!
We were sitting on a bench on the Thames when I said, “We’re done with all the things we originally planned to do today, so now we have two choices. First, we could go back to the hotel and just rest, play games and pack. Or, second, we could go see Hamilton. Which do you prefer?” Nora immediately shouted, “Hamilton”, while Drew looked stunned. It was a lot of fun.
A black tie affair at the Globe sounds like a ton of fun. Of course, I’d love a black tie affair anywhere as I love to dress up. Good luck finding that in Arizona. They wear flip flops and sandals to the symphony.