Day 56 – The London West End (Friday 7th June 2024)

The Eurostar to London was scheduled to leave Bruxelles-Midi at 10:56 and our hotel is only a couple of hundred metres away so we weren’t up at the crack of dawn. But we didn’t dilly-dally either. The advice was to get to the station 45 – 90 minutes before departure because it’s an international journey that leaves the Schengen area so border control and all that rigmarole is required. We decided to take the 90 minute option.

For a station that is an important and well patronised international terminal I’ve gotta say that Bruxelles-Midi fall a bit short of the mark. It’s quite old and in dire need of some TLC. I reckon it’s lucky to have seen a lick of paint since it became a hub for the Eurostar service. The German stations we visited in the last few days leave it for dead. Going through Belgian border control I was stopped because the X-ray machine discovered my little combination tool in Kerry’s case. I showed it to them and they let it through in the grounds that “Oh! It’s only a small one”. The same machine failed to detect my Swiss Army knife, a quite sharp 7” blade vegetable knife and two serrated bread knifes I’d packed in the same case. Ten metres further along the passport scanning machine didn’t like my passport (or the look of me) so I was directed to a human who, fortunately, did like the look of me and my passport and we moved through to the already crowded waiting room where we sat for 45 minutes.

Despite the clear signs saying “No need to queue at the gate to Platform 1. We’ll call you.” a long line of people were queueing all the way through the Duty Free store. Very keen to get to the UK, I suppose. When the call came the queue dispersed very quickly as people made their way to their reserved seats. Our carriage was way down the far end of the very long train but we got there in plenty of time. We “lucked out” on the travelling companion front, however. We were accompanied by a group of about a dozen young Belgian or Dutch lads who were in their way to London for the weekend. They were a bunch of excited school-boys, heading off on an adventure. They were probably good young lads (they were all well-groomed and had good teeth), just noisy and a tad exuberant. Not unlike the school children we’ve come across a number of times on public transport throughout the trip – just that they weren’t drinking beer.

Which brings me to an observation. It seems to us that train travel and drinking go hand-in-hand in this part of the world. It’s something quite foreign to us and the vast majority of Australians I’d think. Surely one can take a two hour train ride without the need to have beer? For a lot of people, apparently not. I’ve gotta say, for people like us to whom this is a completely foreign concept, it’s just a little disconcerting as there’s plenty of evidence about the bad outcomes bought about when alcohol is mixed with over-exuberance. My God! I sound like a wowser! Where that last bit of Rakija!

 

The train arrived at St. Pancras/Kings Cross on time, we strolled through the “soft” border control point (I’ve gotta say though, there were about two dozen sets of eyes upon us all as we walked through) and out onto Euston Rd. Down the road we walked for about 1km or so, past Euston Station and then into North Gower St and our Studio (LOL! Shoebox, more like) which had a ground-floor window out into the street. Straightaway we dropped our bags, went back to Euston Station and caught the Underground to Trafalgar Square. It’s always good fun catching the Underground and popping up here and there in London’s weel-known streets. We alighted at Charing Cross, to find that London’s famous landmark had been taken over by America’s Major League Baseball organisation. It seems there a proper match being played in London this week-end. We’ve visited Trafalgar Square four times since 1986 and only once (in 2013) has there not been something on that’s at least partially restricted access to it. Disappointed, we walked away towards St. Martin’s in Fields and beyond to find a pub for a drink - which we had no trouble doing.

 

 

From here we wound our way to Leicester Square which, for mid-afternoon on a Friday was very busy. SO much so that we both wanted to get out of there. Whatever character it may have once had it’s now all gone with nothing but trashy souvenir stores lining the streets and crap music blasting of the ghetto blasters of various “mobile” vendors of equally crap merchandise. Sadly, Piccadilly Circus next door was no better so we moved on up Shaftesbury Avenue towards the West End for tonight we had an appointment with the Novello Theatre to see the London performance of Mamma Mia! We were very early for that 7:30pm appointment so we killed some time walking across the nearby Waterloo Bridge and taking a short stroll along London’s Southbank on the other side. It was quite cool and blustery walking across the Thames but the view down the river to the London Eye, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament was good nevertheless. Back on The Strand we stopped at the Wellington hotel for a quick tea of Bangers and Mash, which was very good and relatively cheap, and then went to queue outside the theatre door.

 

I think everyone knows that the original stage show, and the subsequent movie, runs a story-line that facilitates the inclusion of almost all of ABBA’s hit songs into one comprehensive performance. I have to give credit to the woman who conceived the idea, and to Benny and Bjorn with whom she worked, to make up a story where every one of the hit song remains in context with the overall narrative of the production and remains entertaining throughout. The staging was very simple but effective, just a couple of flexibly arranged pieces that represented either the inside or the outside of a Greek taverna. The only “downer” was the “dinky di” Australian character – one of the three “fathers”. Just as Pierce Brosnan’s singing in the movie was cringe-worthy so too was this character. The English actor’s effort to be an Australian was so bad we both wandered if he’d been directed to play that way on purpose. If not, then surely there must be plenty of genuine Australian actors in London looking for work that would have done a far better job. Anyway, the show was fun, all the hits were wheeled out (and sung properly and in their entirety) and the finale gave everyone in the audience an opportunity to belt out their best version of Waterloo and Mamma Mia.

The show finished at about 10:30pm and the night was still “not cold”. With the rest of the theatre crowd we walked up to Covent Garden station, caught the Piccadilly line to Kings Cross and the Circle line to Euston Square and then walked home.