Day 10: Fashion, Patti, and Fireworks

One of my favorite things to do in cities is wander around alone, so while Taylor slept I got up and went back to the Victoria and Albert Museum...it's a huge museum complex and you could be in there all day, but my strategy was to hit the fashion wing and the theater/performance wing since I didn't have unlimited time. It was about a 10 minute walk from the hotel along a busy shopping street.

To give you an idea of how huge it is...it covers 12.5 acres, has art dating back five thousand years, and holds 2.27 million pieces. The fashion wing is a semi circle, taking you from the 1700s to the modern day with selections of fashion from each era as well as educational plaques on what and who formed the fashion evolutions you see as you walk along. For instance, Japanese culture influenced Britain in the Victorian era and led to a trend of kimono-inspired pieces.

The dress below is a mantua, which rose in fashion in the late 1600s and stayed en vogue until the 1700s. Women were required to wear them to royal assemblies and balls, and remaining examples are very rare, so I felt excited I got to see one! Next time someone complains about their Spanx, I'll show them this picture.

Below is a little sedan chair from the 1700s...rich people of course did not want to walk in the muck of the street, so their servants carried them shopping in these fancy little carts.

This dress is from the mid 1700s and it still looks immaculate...also it was TINY. Child-sized. It really puts into perspective how much smaller people used to be before access to abundant vegetables and vitamins.

I'll now interrupt dresses for this random panda exhibit, which per the plaque is meant to rebel against the cute and cuddly stereotype of the panda and represent the adventurous Chinese generation born in the 1980s.

When you walk into the museum, you're greeted by an absolutely enormous Chihuly chandelier...stunning.

Now, back to dresses. The below is a wedding dress and a waistcoat embroidered by the bride for her groom. I forgot to take a picture of the plaque for the pastel dresses, but I liked them because they made me think of Anne of Green Gables. 

This is one of the Cast Courts, which is filled with copies of great works of sculpture. In some cases, the cast is the only record that exists. One of the more famous ones is the medieval chalice used for the films Ben Hur and also Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Then it was on the theater and performance wing, which I only had to ask for directions to three times. There, I saw Fred Astaire's tuxedo and also Vivien Leigh's wig from A Streetcar Named Desire.

I also saw Edward Scissorhand's scissor hands, some bizarre and ornate costumes from a production of Cinderella, and costumes worn by Judi Dench and Maggie Smith respectively in two plays.

The museum recently acquired the Vivien Leigh archives and had so many of her things, including personal letters written to Laurence Olivier...I loved it. Was anyone more beautiful than Vivien Leigh? And did you know that when her mother was pregnant she used to look at the Himalayan Mountains and pray for their beauty to be passed on to her unborn child? Obviously it worked. 

Perhaps most impressively, I saw Shakespeare's First Folio. It was collected and published in 1623, 7 years after Shakespeare died, by two of Shakespeare's friends and fellow actors. It's so important because if they had not undertaken the work of publishing the First Folio, 18 of his plays would likely have been lost (including The Tempest and Julius Caesar). Two hundred and thirty-three of the First Folios survive today. (I wasn't using flash on any of this, by the way, since that's destructive.)

I had a lot of trouble finding the Folio, because the docent first took me over to a stack of playbills from various West End productions and told me to look there, and if it wasn't there then it wasn't on display. I don't think a book from 1623 is just out for grimy fingers to rifle through, Laura. Anyway, I did eventually find it in a corner of the room. 

The below is a shot of the garden/courtyard at the center of the museum. 

I still had some time, so I decided to go back to the Winter Wonderland and ride Dr. Archibald: Master of Time, which is a virtual reality ride. Every other night the Wonderland had been packed and the lines were insane, but during the day it was surprisingly empty! Probably because everyone is at Harrod's having tea and shopping the sales. It was an awesome ride--you start off down the track in a little car, wearing VR glasses, and you're looking for Dr. Archibald. You ride down the back of a brontesaurus, then move into the sunken city of Atlantis with sharks swimming overhead, and then into a forest of huge, dayglo mushrooms. It was truly a 3D experience, because every which way you looked you saw something different! Of course, at the end you find Dr. Archibald and he looks properly Victorian and eccentric. 

But before you leave the ride, you pass through a mini-obstacle course where you use shaky mushroom stepping stones across a little river. Look at me go!

One of the other coolest parts of the Wonderland is the Carousel Bar--the bar itself revolves slowly, and the tables are attached to carousel horses. Not for those who are already drunk or get motion sickness. 

From the Wonderland I returned to the hotel to pick up Taylor--we had tickets to see Company with Patti Lupone at 2:30 at the Gielgud Theatre in the West End. The pictures below are just from our walk, and I especially loved the very narrow pub. 

Since we hadn't eaten, we stopped in for a quick bite at Mother's Mash, which features a variety of mashed potatoes you can top with sausages or pie. I had a chicken, bacon, leek pie with traditional gravy and also mustard grain mashed potatoes. I was skeptical, but it was really good! And yes, Mom, I still just eat the crust of the pot pie and leave all the insides. 

I couldn't get it all in with my camera, but this street had the most famous lines of Bohemian Rhapsody spelled out in lights, and it made me laugh. London is weird. 

Finally it was time for my second very exciting theatre experience, seeing Patti Lupone in Company.  Company is a Stephen Sondheim musical from 1970 about a man named Bobby who's turning 35...all of his friends are married (in various stages of unhappiness), and as he observes their lives he questions his own unwillingness to settle down and also what one even gets out of marriage. It's a groundbreaking musical in both its format and how it addresses modern-day, middle class problems. What makes it so exciting in the new West End production, though, is that Stephen Sondheim worked with the director to update the play and make one of the couples gay and also to cast the lead as a woman. And when a woman is turning 35, unmarried and childless, it's a whole new dynamic. There's a good review here if anyone is interested. 

It was excellent--it felt so fresh and new and exciting (I've seen it before with Bobby as a man), and the cast was amazing, especially the scenes where Jamie is panicking about getting married and singing at a faster pace than should be humanly possible, and then Patti Lupone's show-stopper, "Ladies Who Lunch." Seeing her gave me goosebumps--her vocals are effortless. Another great scene was one where Bobbie imagines how her life would be married, and then pregnant, and then as a new mom--she stands watching versions of herself struggle in each phase, from her husband missing the toilet in the newlywed phase and her squeamishly wiping it up to her angrily knocking a gift of lingerie out of her husband's hands as she holds a screaming child. You can see her fear and confusion and trepidation so well--it's an overwhelming, impactful montage. (The play is a pretty wholly negative representation of marriage, but it's not weirdly not depressing--it's just funny and poignant by turns.)

Also, I know you're not supposed to take pictures at all, but I couldn't help it during the bows--sorry Patti. I could have watched it a second time and not been bored for a second. Also, bonus, Mel from The Great British Baking Show has a sizable part in it! She has a great voice too.

Then it was BACK to the Wonderland (I know, I know, but it was free), because I wanted to ride the swings at night to see the whole city. They went up really high--this picture is them about halfway up. Even though it was New Year's Eve, there was hardly anyone there, so I also made Taylor ride a hokey Haunted Mansion knock-off. 

The streets of London were getting packed as everyone waited for the fireworks, so we decided to go back to the Lebanese place again and try something different (since I loved it so much the first time). Even though it was full, the waiter remembered us and pulled a table from somewhere for us to sit! I had that night's special, which was turkey breast wrapped around saffron rice and peas, baked in gravy with potatoes. It doesn't look very appetizing in this picture, but I promise it was delicious. 

After our meal, it was back to our room to watch the fireworks--if you leaned a certain way at the window, you could see straight to the London Eye and the 10-minute spectacle. Apparently it cost 6.3 million pounds, which seems a bit excessive, but it was an awesome sight to see. Then, a mere three hours later we would be off to the airport to visit Dubrovnik...