When we visited London in the late ‘90s, the skyline looked much different. Many of the new buildings hadn’t been built yet and the London Eye, that big wheel of pods over the Thames, did not exist. Today was another good-weather day, so we decided to join all the other tourists for a bird’s eye view of London. We had heard that it was faster and cheaper to purchase tickets online, so that’s what we did. There was a bit of a wait in the queue, but we finally boarded one of the pods for the half-hour ride. Although many websites listing “sights you can miss in London” include the Eye, we thought it was great fun and worth the admission and the wait.

We had tickets for an afternoon play and some time to kill, so we decided to take a quick look at the Tate Modern. We still have plenty of credit on our Oyster Card, but we didn’t want to take the Tube, so we headed for the MBNA Thames Clipper. This is a ferry that goes up and down the Thames, and on a nice day it’s a quite pleasant way to get where you need to go. It’s like a cheap cruise.

That Tate Modern, like many other museums and galleries in London, is free so we don’t feel bad if we only see a part of it. As with most modern art galleries, we saw several pieces we liked and some we didn’t. Much of the crowd there consisted of school groups and I think they were doing what we were doing – killing an hour or so before the play at the Globe.

We missed the Globe Theater on our previous trip to London because it was undergoing renovations, and I was eager to experience a play in Shakespeare’s theater. The play today was The Winter’s Tale and I enjoyed it immensely. The Globe is an open air theater so we were grateful for the good weather until we realized our seats were right where the afternoon sun was the brightest. Even with sunglasses it was difficult to see the stage until an usher came around and handed out visors to everyone in our section. The planes flying overhead were also an annoyance, but the actors were quite good at pausing or increasing volume to overcome the noise from outside. (I imagine in Shakespeare’s day there were other kinds of noises drifting in from outside as well.) It’s always a joy to see Shakespeare performed by good actors. I don’t know this play as well as some others, but I had no trouble following it, and it was never boring. It was fun to see how the actors played to the groundlings (members of the audience who stood in front of the stage) and interacted with the hecklers.

We decided not to return to the hotel to catch the group bus to our evening show. Instead, we took the tube to the theater and then found a pub nearby for dinner. Tonight’s show was Bat Out of Hell featuring the music of Meat Loaf. Many members of our group are seniors like us, so knowing it would be loud, we were given earplugs. In retrospect, I wonder if I would have enjoyed this show more without them, because much of the time I was just bored with it. The music was good (and familiar – it’s Meat Loaf!), the dancing was energetic, but the plot was nonsensical. The story was a remaking of Peter Pan, but in our after-show discussion it was clear that many in our group didn’t get that. The show included a lot of cool stage effects including pyrotechnics, but in the end I felt I would have liked it better if it had just been billed as a rock concert and not musical theater. Maybe the worst thing was that I couldn’t get “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” out of my head, but I guess you should leave a musical humming the tunes.

Tomorrow is our last day in London. We’ll have a free day for sightseeing, and in the evening it’s Wicked.