Day 7: The Day in Which I See My Movie Star Boyfriend of Twenty Years!!!

We started our first full day in London at Harrod's, the largest department store in Europe (and maybe the most crowded? It was packed!) In addition to floors and floors of clothing and designer displays, it also has a food hall and a tea room. Fish, cheese, meringue puffs, chocolates, pudding...if you want to eat it, you can probably find it at Harrod's. The real question is whether you want to stand in line for it.*

*That's a picture of Harvey Nichols, also famous but I'm too lazy to switch them out...just fyi. 

My favorite part of Harrod's was the displays--fantastical and over the top. They also had a Mary Poppins snow globe you could go inside of and get a picture, but I don't like Mary Poppins $10 worth, so we skipped that bit of fun and contented ourselves with seeing the costumes in the window. 

A dead ringer for Meghan Markle in my navy coat, obviously. 

After Harrod's, we started our walk to a Georgian restaurant for lunch, which took us past the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens...it was commissioned by Queen Victoria in remembrance of her husband. We didn't go into the park to see Kensington Palace, but I doubt Kate and Wills were in the front yard to be seen anyway. 

The Georgian restaurant proved to be a lesson to us in checking opening hours--it was closed. So we turned around to go back the way we came, and along the way I saw a festive rhinoceros. We ended up at a place in Mayfair called The Ugly Dumpling, where we had satay chicken dumplings, mushroom and truffle dumplings, pork dumplings, and savory duck dumplings. 

I'm not sure what these pink unicorn taxis are, but I like them a lot. I wish I had ridden in one. 

After eating our dumplings, we wandered around Mayfair, which is a maze of shops, little pubs, and dessert places. Taylor had a beer at The Ship, and then we stepped into Cutter & Squidge, where I had the BEST gingerbread cookie sandwich...it was soft and filled with caramel gingerbread cream. The downstairs is also where they hold the "potions tea," which we didn't do but which is a flagrant knock-off of Harry Potter and looks like something I'd really enjoy.

We also stopped for a drink in a Victorian pub called The Queen's Head, which was tiny and warm and looked very much like The Ship...turns out almost all of the pubs look the same inside.

Then, after much wandering, it was time to go to the National Theatre to see Antony and Cleopatra, the whole reason we finally visited London. I bought the tickets back in July, but I've loved Ralph Fiennes since I was about thirteen years old and have wanted to see him live on stage forever. The last time he did a Broadway play was in 2006, so I'd given up on seeing him in America. 

It was three-and-a-half hours long, which means it wasn't Taylor's favorite play, but I loved every second of finally seeing my favorite (living) actor on stage. He was amazing--at the very beginning the play shows him cavorting with Cleopatra in Egypt, drunken and high on love, toenails painted black and his hair wild. Over the course of the story, though, as he clashes with the younger and more ruthless Caesar, you see Ralph's character go from a dissipated lover to a fierce general, and then finally to a man destroyed by guilt, grief, and his inability to live up to the glories of his youth. It was amazing how he managed to portray Antony in such a way that you saw his past power and virility, even though he's now paunchy and hunched with the weariness of his years. The whole audience gasped when the devoted Eros died, as well as when Cleopatra brought out a real snake that would be the means of her suicide. 

Also, you could just tell Ralph loves acting on stage--he was all smiles at the end, looking genuinely happy, and it gave me all the emotions. Seeing this play was such a dream come true for me that I don't really even have adequate words to describe the experience--especially being in the fourth row and being able to see all the nuances of expression. My favorite scenes were ones where Caesar and Antony had made temporary peace with Pompey, and were reveling and dancing and singing, and also where Antony has had one of Caesar's messengers beaten and then he cruelly pours bourbon into the messenger's wounds. I know that sounds awful, but it was an intense, great scene where Antony is asserting that he is still a man to be reckoned with. (Also, to explain the costumes...it was set in modern day, which made for an interesting staging.)

After the play, we squeezed in a quick dinner at a Lebanese restaurant. I've never had food from that country, but I loved it! Taylor had charbroiled lamb and mushrooms, which I ate most of, and I had chicken skewers (which I also ate...I guess plays make me hungry). It came with the most delicious garlic and chili sauces, and we also had a dip made of roasted aubergines and pomegranate seeds. 

Our last stop was the hotel bar to have a cocktail, since there was no way I could possibly sleep after all that excitement and lamb.