London Adventures!

Traveling to London for work again was fabulous!  My big "me" adventure was to go to the Harry Potter Studio Tour.  But more about that in a different post, here's some quick fun adventures I had that weren't related to Harry Potter.  Because after all, life is an adventure!

The car that came to pick me up from the airport was some kind of strange hummer limo hybrid.  The picture shows the seats that were in front of me, whereas I sat in the backseat on identical seats facing forward instead of backward.  Pretty crazy!!

The hotel was also very nice.  It had a somewhat strange bird theme and I couldn't quite figure out where the pictures went, but the frames in the hallway had a certain charm about them I suppose.

Monday

After starting my day (as I did each morning for the rest of the week) with the provided continental breakfast at the hotel, I found my way to the office and met some fabulous new people I would be working with.  After work that night my coworker who lives in the same area as my hotel took me around Westfield Mall, the largest mall in Europe!  We had dinner in the food court, which may sound extremely un-fancy, but actually the Indian place I ordered from gave me my food on real plates with real cutlery and a cloth napkin.  Very posh for food court food!

Even the breakfast was fancy - I had fun people watching
while I ate

Giant mall!!

Inside of giant mall decorated for Christmas!

The outdoor terrace with several restaurants

And of course, me in front of Santa's Grotto...at the giant mall

Tuesday

Another long, but fun, day of training.  After work I went out with several coworkers and we had dinner at a place called Gourmet Burger Kitchen.  Great food, and apparently employees of a certain company where I am employed get 20% off.  Good deal!

Wednesday

That evening I went out for a pint with yet another coworker (have I mentioned how awesome the people I work with are??) to a craft brewery place.  Great food, great cider, great company!

Thursday

Our entire training group all had lunch together at a thai place across the street from the office.  It was a fun lunch as it was a fun group of people!  The only funny thing was I ordered Mango and sticky rice as my dessert, which of course was delicious, but the rice was blue!  I still don't know if this is normal or not, but it still tasted great!  This was also the one evening I didn't have plans with people.  But that worked out alright!  I went to a local grocery store, bought a ton of chocolate to bring home and experienced my first "1 pound shop".  Think a dollar store, except everything is actually a dollar (well, a pound).  There I bought more chocolate!  Basically by the time I packed everything up my suitcase was 3/4 chocolate and 1/4 dirty clothes.  I also really wandered around the mall some more. Have I mentioned the mall was a 5 minute walk from my hotel?  This time I went to the Tapas bar at the food court.  That was fabulous, it tasted just like I was in Spain again.  Deliciosa!

Mango and blue/grey sticky rice

Friday

After a couple morning meetings I headed back the airport.  I only got slightly distracted at the duty free shop while I was waiting for my flight to board.  But eventually I was on the airplane heading back to NYC!

Frozen....On Ice!

Kari and I went to see Disney's Frozen On Ice!  We are definitely not the targeted age demographic, but who cares?  It was adorable and we had a lot of fun!

The thing that struck me most was just how talented the ice skaters were.  I guess if ice skating is one of your skills this might be a fun way to make some money as a performer!  Also, because it's Disney, the production values were really high.  The costumes were gorgeous, and looked exactly how you would expected animation to be turned into real life.  The sets were fun and interactive, moving around on the ice, and there was of course pyrotechnics to round it out.  I also liked how the entire show was pre-recorded (of course) so it was the actual actors voices from the movie.  Yet, even though the skaters were definitely not speaking their own lines, they mouthed along with everything so you just about believed they were really saying it!

First Mickey and Minnie introduced the show and talked about how cool love was.  Then a bunch of different characters from other Disney movies came out.  You had the traditional princess/prince combos (Cinderella and her prince, Rapunzel and Ryder Flynn), then there was a father/son combo (Nemo and Marlin), and there was best friend combos (Timon and Pumba, Woody and Buzz).  They all sang and danced.  The rest of the show was basically the entire movie of Frozen with most of the dialogue cut out.  They did a really good job, however, and keeping the story going so you always knew what was happening, but making it very song and dance heavy.  One of the best parts was in the middle of the song "Reindeers are better than people", which is normally about 30 seconds, there was a dance break where Kristoff ice skated around.  He was really good!  He even did a back flip!

The other thing they did was to move "Let it Go" back a little bit so that it could happen right before intermission which I noticed it missing from it's place chronologically, but it didn't really affect the storyline and worked for the flow of the show.

Basically, it was great and I had a blast!!

The stage - and the pulsing glow of the pink tiara of the girl in front of us

Yes, I bought a snow cone in a collectible cup...

Cinderella with Nemo behind

Timon and Pumba

Anna

Kristoff and Sven

Elsa

Intermission!

Meeting Olaf for the first time

And playing catch with his head

Marshmallow

The trolls

The end!

Here are some cute highlights somebody filmed from the show so you can get the idea :)

Newsical the Musical

Every year at the Broadway Flea Market there's a booth that sells tickets and you pull the tickets apart and inside some of them it says "winner!".  If you're a winner you then win a random selection of tickets to a show.  Two years ago I won tickets to see Phantom of the Opera, and last  year I won nothing.  But this year I won 2 tickets to see Newsical the Musical, a bizarre little off broadway show that's been around for a while.  And last night was my night to see the show.

I think one of the coolest parts was actually just being able to see a new theatre.  It's at this theatre complex called Theatre Row which houses about 5 or 6 tiny theatres, all playing different things.  Kind of like New World Stages, but not as fancy ^_^

The show itself was somewhat funny.  Part were funny and parts weren't.  It's basically a sketch comedy show with music all about the latest news and pop culture events.  So as with any type of parody comedy show, it was hit or miss.  My favorite was their impression of Fran Drescher, and there was also a segment called Live with Larry and Liza (Larry King and Liza Minnelli) that was funny.  The Liza impression in particular was great.  All in all though....I'm glad the tickets were free!

Flamenco and Big Hero 6

The November adventures continue! Last night Kari and I were able to see a Flamenco show.  It was called Soledad Barrio & Noche Flamenca and they were very impressive!  The dancers were fantastic. The first half of the show was an interpretation of the story of Antigone and the second half was 3 different dances.  It was definitely something different but fun!  It was also nice to be in a new theatre.

Before the show, Kari and I stopped at a bar across the street for some dinner.  You could draw on the tables so we did!

Such high art

This morning we had a roommates outing and all three of us went to see the new Disney movie Big Hero 6.  It was really really cute!  I highly recommend it.  And instead of me telling about the plot, here's the trailer instead.  Oh and the short at the beginning is about a puppy and extremely adorable!



After the movie we had lunch at Brooklyn Diner.  I had chicken pot pie that was delicious!

Roommate fun!

Delicious (and huge!) chicken pot pie

Amateur Night at the Apollo

Some of my coworkers ended up having an extra ticket to Amateur Night at the Apollo yesterday so I decided to go with them at the last minute!

Amateur Night at the Apollo theatre dates back quite a ways I do believe.  Even though I practically used to live down the street from the Apollo this was actually my first time ever being in the theatre.  It ended up being a lot of fun!  It was basically like a live version of America's Got Talent.  People got booed off the stage or cheered depending on if they were any good and then the winner was determined by a clap-o-meter on stage.  The best part was when someone was booed, they got tapped off stage.  There was a tap dancer who literally tapped his way and pushed them off.  The other fun part was the beginning where they have the "stars of the future" perform.  These are always kids ages 5-15 and they were so cute!

The strange thing is that this is very much a make noise, clap, yell, scream, use your phone, record things kind of event which is very different than what I'm used to when I got to the theatre!

My selfie from the official app they try to get you
to download.

Crowning the winners

iLuminate November

Seth and I had some Post-Halloween adventures!  On Saturday we decided to go see a show and Seth thought iLuminate looked fun so we went.

This group got their start on America's Got Talent.  It's kind of like a light show with dance.  Everything is in the dark and the dancers have light up suits.  It was a pretty cool show and fun to see!  Here's a video of the group doing a TEDx performance.  It gives you a good sense of what the show does.



After the show we made brownies!  But not any old kind of brownies, we made chocolate chip cookie Oreo brownie bars.  It's a layer of chocolate chip cookie dough, then a layer of oreos and finally topped off with a layer of brownie batter.  Then it all bakes together into a delicious mix of cookie/brownie goodness.

Then on Sunday we walked over to the NYC Marathon.  We were around mile 21 and got to see the professionals round the bend.  It's pretty amazing.  It was also fun just to see everyone being so positive and supportive of the runners.

Walking back towards my apartment we passed a house that I've seen a bunch of times and it turns out it is a historical site of the only house that Alexander Hamilton ever owned (though he only lived there two years).  It was kind of fun to go in and see the little museum and tour the upstairs of the house.  Something different at least and you never know what's in your own back yard!

Phantom of the Opera Pop Up Shop

On Sunday Kari and I went around running some errands but on our way I dragged Kari to the Phantom of the Opera pop up shop.  They set it up to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the show (including London performances).  You could buy little trinkets and things but the coolest part was the photo op that was set up as well as having some of the costumes on display.  It was certainly a neat little pit stop!