London Day Eight

Celine was meeting up with an old friend of hers on our last day, so Kenneth and I decided to head to the Light Show at the Hayward Gallery, SouthBank. No photos were permitted, but it was an interesting exhibition of different light installations. Some were visibly better than others but that was to be expected. Honestly,  It was quite inspiring, one day I may become an installation artist if I don't end up electrocuting myself first. Hey, if that happens my books may actually sell!

We decided to see a play at the last minute, so we tubed it to Leicester Square and booked tickets for one of the hottest shows in town -- Matilda. Then we stopped off  at Foyles to browse the books and to have something to drink before Ken went off for a lunch appointment. I wondered around Leicester Square for a bit and checked out celeb hot spot the Ivy before taking the tube to Knightsbridge and high-tailing it to the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, where a very important personage was scheduled to make an appearance at the Walking with the Wounded South Pole Challenge press conference.

Waiting for the VIP

Prince Harry, the VIP arrives

Prince Harry departs

Shortly thereafter I got a message from Ken, asking if I would like to meet for tea at the British Museum. As I'm rather directionally challenged, I took the tube to Leceister Square, did a bit of shopping at Foyles and asked the cashier for directions and I actually did manage to find it.

The British Museum

My tea

I ordered the scones, jam and clotted cream but only managed to finish about half my order. After downing my cup of tea, we checked out the Rosetta Stone, which I haven't seen since I was 13!

The Rosetta Stone

Then it was time to go to the theatre and Kenneth spotted a celebrity in the crowd: actor Chris O'Dowd, whom I met on my last day in London last year. He's fast becoming my last day in London celebrity. Kenneth advised me not to approach him, lest I get all fan boy crazy. Fortunately for Kenneth I agreed not to, since I did that the previous year.

The show, in a word, was fantastic. Thoroughly enjoyable and the song that I could relate to the most was 'When I Grow Up' because I still haven't.

After the show, we debated about whether to go for dinner, but we had been out for the whole day and we were kind of tired, so we opted to go back to the hotel by cab. The trip was over, we were tired and we still needed to pack and check out of the hotel by 2pm the next day. I finished the last of my packing and went to bed by midnight.

London Day Three

Kenneth and Celine spent the morning in and the whole day at work ensuring that everything will run smoothly when the fair starts on the 15th, when the work part of this trip officially starts for me. As this was my only Sunday I decided to take it easy and chill before the busyness of the week, So I took a walk in Hyde Park before meeting Gee and Chris for lunch at St John in Leicester Square. We had lunch at this very nice cafe and our very helpful and gracious server, Michael, as it turns out, is an illustrator, so I'll have to check out his portfolio online to see if we. And work on something in the future. Any way that's it for now. I'll keep you all updated from Day One of the fair tomorrow. Peace out, everyone.

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London Day Two

After only a few hours of sleep I awoke and unpacked and tidied up a bit before I decided to try to go back to sleep. Celine, Ken and I decided to head to Costa Coffee for some breakfast before they headed to the exhibition centre to check out the Singapore Pavilion and I headed to Daunt Books Chelsea to drop off 30 of my books for sale on Tuesday night, which is when I'll be apart of a panel discussing Singapore Literature.
We met up at Daunt before We set off to Leicester Square as we were going to watch Mark Haddon's Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night -Time

Celine attacking her lunch

With some time to kill - Ken and I headed to the National Portrait Gallery while Celine headed to the museums of consumer spending. Then it was time for lunch! Ken spotted a reasonably priced steak restaurant so we all ordered the same thing and choked down, it was good!!

Kenneth savouring his.

My lunch and I

So with our stomachs satisfied we went in search of the theatre and thank goodness no one listened to my directions otherwise might have ended up in Vauxhall or Shoreditch.

The play -quite simply like the book-is brilliant! Luke Treadaway is an amazing actor and the show will keep you spell-bound even when you are suffering third degree jet lag, This is one show you definitely have got to watch when you're in London.

My friends Gee Yung and Chris arranged to meet up after the show and we all enjoyed a nice dinner of tapas. Then they had to dash of for a show of their own but not before we arranged to meet up for Sunday brunch.
Then the three of us checked out a comic book shop before taking the tube back to Earl's Court for our second night in town. Our trip's moving along faster than I would like. In less than a week we'll be back in Singapore.

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London Day # 2

23 March

There is nothing quite like a full English breakfast to kick start your day. Thankfully we managed to get free breakfast with our room-Thanks Sheila. The breakfast was terrific, could eat it every day which we did when we were there.

Breakfast

After breakfast, while Ken did some work- the guy was working every spare moment for his festival The Asian Festival of Children's Content-I headed for a  walk along Oxford Street, picked up an Oyster Card for travel by tube before we headed out for a trip to Leicester Square

Post breakfast morning walk

My head was too big for the Foyles sign so I had to retake the photo

Of course we had to stop by the famous Foyles...

Me in front of Foyles

We picked up some tickets for Zach Braff's new play 'All New People" which we intended to see after lunch at London's Rules restaurant, the oldest restaurant in London the following day.

While Ken headed off for a lunch appointment, I wandered around, picked up lunch at Selfridges- a delicious roast beef sandwich and some cupcakes before heading back to the hotel. 

In the evening, I dashed off for dinner with Gee at a nice little Italian restaurant around the corner from the hotel with not so little prices. We started with a seafood salad, shared a Dover sole and I finished with strawberries and cream.  

Gee and the Dover Sole

After  Gee Yung took us for a walking tour around London before we headed back to the hotel for hopefully a full night's sleep...