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  • Day 105

    Another day, another concert

    November 11, 2021 in England ⋅ ⛅ 9 °C

    A good day again. We started out going to the Tate Britain, the original one on the river bank near Vauxhall bridge. That was good, and amazingly uncrowded, as is the whole city. You can walk down Oxford street without being permanently on a collision course with people. We actually walked to the Tate which is a fair way from Earl’s Court…we had been going to get a tube to Victoria but decided to walk and it was longer than we had anticipated.

    After a sandwich at the gallery cafe, Amr and I both took the underground - he to do some of his special things - the TinTin shop, Jermyn street for shaving things, and I went back to the hotel for some downtime. I find I am finally getting to the end of sightseeing and doing interesting things!! And it was good to just read and relax for a little while. Then we met up again at 3.30 and made our way to the Barbican as we had a concert there tonight and we wanted to find our way as it is out of our usual London area…we have been there before, but ages ago. So we found it - such an ugly area of huge concrete buildings built in about the 50s or 60s and the concert hall part is not user friendly either so it was good to find where we needed to be. We also found a nice Italian restaurant in the building too where we booked to eat before the concert, and that turned out to be excellent.

    Having sorted it all out we went to a pub on the corner - the Jugged Hare - such a typical pub, until it suddenly became totally crowded with rather spivvy financial types all having after work drinks (?at 4.30!)… Anyway, we met Omnia and had the good dinner, and a fabulous concert! The London Symphony Orchestra this time, and another great programme - Saint Saëns piano concerto No 2 (a special favourite) and Beethoven Eroica!!! What could be better…and even the shorter starting work was 18th century music by an unknown (to me) composer and not some modern discordant stuff. So very happy - I think they are putting on programmes that they know people love after the drought of concerts during covid! And it looked like a full house and it was excellent to see lots of young people, not just old fogeys, so there are some young generation lovers of classical music…refreshing to see…they seemed enthusiastic and happy. Not many photos…
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