I’m still here! Had a brief period of radio silence in London, but I’m still alive.
Truth is, nothing really exciting happened the past week. I’m lucky to visit London fairly frequently and I can say I know it well, so I don’t do the typical tourist things anymore. I haven’t even walked past Big Ben this time!
The little tourism I did involved going to Covent Garden, a quick visit to the Science Museum to watch Dunkirk in 70mm IMAX and to the O2 complex for the Star Wars Identities exhibition. I didn’t even walk around Greenwich because the weather was particularly bad that day, unfortunately.
Of all these things, I really recommend visiting the Star Wars exhibition if you are a fan. I think it will only be in London for a few extra months, but it seems to be travelling around the world, so keep an eye on the site www.starwarsidentities.com if you are going abroad. There are many costumes, miniatures and props from all the films and the focus of the exhibition is the identities, similarities and differences between two characters: Anakin and Luke. During the walk through the items you answer a few questions that make up the profile of a character with your identity. I created Gabizilla, a human senator from Naboo.
The geek crowd should also like the Science Museum. It’s located right next door from the Natural History Museum and unlike that one, it doesn’t have the gigantic queue to get in. Of course, you should still visit the NHM if you’ve never done it before. But I have, so I chose not to go there again. The Science Museum has a nice area dedicated to space exploration, in addition to other exhibitions. Admittance is free and it also has an IMAX theatre upstairs (paid). It’s a small independent theatre, so don’t expect all the comfort we find in IMAX rooms in Brasil. I was disappointed, to be honest. But the main thing was to watch Dunkirk the way Nolan intended it to be seen: in 70mm IMAX. Very few cinemas in the world are showing it in this format.
In addition to these few touristic things we’ve done, most of our time was dedicated to meeting old friends. Some of them we meet every time we’re here, some we met for the first time or at least the first time in many years. But it was great to see them and spend some hours together. And we went shopping, of course. We stayed right by Westfield again and really took advantage of the excellent location. We also spent some hours around Oxford Street and New Bond Street, where many brands have their flagship stores (hello Lush!). And we had the obligatory visits to TK Maxx to find bargains such as the £25 Diesel jeans I got! It is always good to check TK Maxx even if you don’t need anything. Seriously. Just avoid the one in Covent Garden as it has the worst staff of everyone I’ve visited (and I’ve visited many). The ones in Kensington and Charing Cross are really good.
Now we’re in Wales. It’s Sunday, so there isn’t much we can do today But on Monday we should check Cardiff out and on Friday I’ve already booked something I’ve wanted to do since last year: Doctor Who film location tour. Last year I visited the Doctor Who Experience and had the chance to enter the T.A.R.D.I.S. set. It was amazing!! But the location tour was closed because it was winter. So now I jumped on the chance of doing it. Stay tuned to see what we’re up to here.
