Day three, a day late

Due to seeing the musical Oliver last night, it was too late to update our activities. So I hope I will remember today what we did yesterday!

We started out with the intention of going on the Notting Hill and Portobello Road Market London Walk, but naturally, we arrived at the meeting place early. Luckily, there was a Patisserie Valerie nearby, so that we could fortify ourselves.

Once the tour commenced, we saw the beautiful Victorian neighborhood of Holland Park. The houses were build so as to appear to be made of stone, even though this was not the case. In the places where there is space between the buildings, the brickwork can be seen. Apparently, it was too expensive to build with stone, so they had to do the best they could.

We also saw many of the buildings which were used in numerous films. The one film most people seemed interested in was the romantic comedy "Notting Hill," starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. Even though many of the buildings featured in the film are actually in Notting Hill, locations had been changed and the fronts of some buildings and interiors of others were switched around. The guide was able to point out all the relevant locations and explain how things had been changed, but it had been so long since I'd seen the film that I didn't really know a lot of the scenes that were discussed.

After that, we reached the madhouse that is the Portobello Road Market on a warm sunny day. There were throngs of people everywhere, and booths lining both sides of the street. It was difficult to know where to look. I tried to take some videos, but I mostly only succeeded in capturing all the people who kept wandering in front of me:

Although we looked at a lot of things, the search for food was a bigger concern as the afternoon wore on. There were many restaurants along the route, but most of them were really, really full. We finally found a free table at a restaurant called "Uncle's." It was also very crowded, and the service was very, very slow. It took forever to get orders taken, drinks delivered, food, etc. We had to ask for the bill three times. Oh well, at least we didn't starve to death.

The next order of business was to find the theatre where Oliver was being performed. It turned out to be near Covent Garden. While we were waiting for the performance, we walked around and saw some of the street performers. Ben especially enjoyed "Lucky Jim":

After that, we found our seats for the performance of Oliver. We were expecting to be somewhat disappointed, because I had just read that Rowan Atkinson would be out until May 4. However, when the character of Fagin made his appearance, we were able to see that he had come back early. He was definitely the stand-out performer of the show (although everyone was very good). I could have done without the violence to "Teddy," but I guess you can't have everything!