Last Sunday, I headed into London to meet a friend to explore the British Museum, Covent Garden and meet another friend to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Globe. You could speak for hours about how amazing Covent Garden is, with all the shops and food places and the Jubilee Market. Every store you could imagine and food places like Jamie Oliver’s Italian and Shake Shack (get your fix of American burgers), it suits every type of palate.
We wandered down to Southbank, where there’s a small market under the bridge that sells used books- rows and rows of books. You could spend an hour alone looking at old 80’s recipe books and novels with their spines bent from the avid reader immersing themselves in the book.
My friend and I had a cheap Tesco meal (gotta save where you can right?) by the river and casually strolled by the Thames, looking at all the people sitting in restaurants and drinking on a balmy Sunday night.
We made it to the Globe and if you like Shakespeare, I highly recommend paying the tickets to see a show for sure. The interiors are deliberately made to look like the same one as back in the day, with a standing area and massive stage.
For those that know about the play, here’s an overview:
- A man and woman love each other
- Her father doesn’t want them to marry
- Another dude loves that same girl, and father approves of him though
- Another lonely chick loves the other dude that loves the original girl
- There’s fairies that use spells and it goes wrong
- People love people they didn’t originally because of the spell
- Workers from the city put on a play for a wedding
- Everything ends happily
However, this play changed character to make one a gay man (amazing! Beyonce’s Single Ladies even made an appearance) and the workers performing the play pretended to work at the Globe with uniforms on too. It was a really enjoyable experience and even if you don’t like Shakespeare, they put on other plays there too when the Shakespeare season isn’t running.
If you want to check out the Southbank Book Market-type thing, Waterloo tube station is probably the best!
Covent Garden has its own tube station, but I like wandering down from Trafalger Square after seeing the art galleries there. It’s a ten minute walk.
Enjoy!
allaroundthelondontower 