Fireworks, Swing Dancing, and Bad Musicals.

Today is my last free day in London before we leave in 2 days for Norwich and the start of classes, so I wanted to give an overview of the past few days...(and I am also sure you are all wondering about the title of this blog post too...).

After seeing about 5 plays during my time here in London, I was quite pooped out of sitting through another production. Especially since The Pitmen Painters that I just saw was incredible. My professor, not being overly fond of musicals, decided to give one a go called Blood Brothers. I love musicals, and although I was a bit "play-ed out", I was sort of looking forward to it. I was wrong. The plot of the musical was predictable and much overdone. Worst of all though, was the music. It was 80s-90s-synthesizer-Kenny G -smooth -jazz-skid row, all sorts of bad. Plus there was this awkward narrator that creeped on every scene and sang strange parts. The actors and actress were talented, no doubt, but the play was flawed. The one good thing about the musical was the amusement factor during and after it. Everyone had the same thoughts about it, even my professor. We all agreed it was terrible, yet incredibly amusing. Here's a clip from youtube of the creepy narrator and bad music, Blood Brothers.

My swing friend Kim and I post-swing dancing.

The Thames River Festival is an event all weekend long featuring swing dancing, yummy foods, fireworks, shows in front of the National Theatre, and street vendors. Yesterday I noticed that there was swing dancing pretty much all day and fireworks later that night over the Thames. Of course, I could not pass up either of those two. My friend Kim, who also swing dances, and I decided to head over to the dance floor after dinner. We picked up some spicy chicken and rice at a Korean food vendor and then got ready to swing. It was so neat, both dancing on the banks of the Thames and noticing the differences between American and British swing dance. Leads kept asking Kim and I if it was alright if they improvised, and I was puzzled by why they kept asking us. After all, that is what swing and jazz is all about, improvising. It just must be the swing culture here. All the leads were excellent dancers and Kim and I just had a wonderful few hours dancing, swinging and singing.
A sign for the event, The Big Swing and hard to see in the background is Tower (aka London) Bridge.

Then we headed off down the Thames in search of our friends and a good spot to watch the fireworks. Unfortunately, we did not get to find our friends due to mass amounts of people around the bridges. Luckily though, we did find the best place to watch the fireworks with minimal amounts of people. In front of the Globe Theatre there are stairs that lead down into the Thames and faced in the direction of the fireworks. It was perfect. We got to sit, spread out, and enjoy the fireworks. And by American standards, they were pretty good.


Now it is our last free day. I am not quite sure what I want to do with it, since I hope I will be back sometime in the future! Some of us are planning on going on the London Eye at night because I love viewing cities at night. There are also one or two last minute museums that I want to visit. After spending a month here I still feel like there is so much I didn't do, and yet, I did so much. That is the beauty of a big city.