A Wicked Day In London

Today was the best possible Saturday I could ask for – we managed to get front row tickets to Wicked, a musical about “the untold story of the wicked witch of the west,” and then we stumbled upon the Queen’s birthday celebration and saw the whole Royal Family at Buckingham Palace!  I am so thankful we happened to be at the right place at the right time…

Our day began at 8:30 am at London’s Apollo Victoria Theatre, where we lined up for tickets for this evening’s production of Wicked.  For almost all theatre shows in London, tickets for seats at the very front row are held for sale on the day of the show for super cheap, at the theatre’s box office (depending on the show, tickets range from £15-25).  In the case of Wicked, two performances take place on Saturdays (a matinee and an evening) and there are 20 front row tickets per show.  We were a bit nervous about whether we would get tickets because there were already 22 people in line when we got there and each person is allowed to buy two tickets.  When the box office finally opened at 10 am, we were relieved to find that not every individual in front of us was buying two tickets and we got the second last pair of tickets for the evening show.  There was still a huge queue of people behind us, but I’m not sure what they were lining up for since almost all the front row tickets were gone!

With our Wicked tickets secured, we headed off to Buckingham Palace, thinking we would catch the changing of the guards which happens daily at 11 am.  As we got to the side of Buckingham palace, we noticed a number police officers keeping a small crowd from stepping off the sidewalk as what looked like the royal carriages were being taken out of the side gates.  I decided to ask a police officer what was happening and he replied “it’s the Queens birthday,” in a way that made me feel totally stupid for not knowing, but we honestly had no clue!  We headed over to the ultra-crowded, barricaded, and tightly patrolled area in front of Buckingham Palace and found a place to stand and watch (from a distance) as the carriages brought the Queen and her husband out to a nearby ceremony which is apparently performed around this time every year for her birthday, even though her actual birthday is in April! 

No one could say when she would come back, but we decided to stay with the crowd and wait it out in hopes that when she returned, her carriage would come around on our side, opposite of the way she had left.  After half an hour of waiting in the sun, we considered giving up and leaving, but then we figured we might as wait it out since we had been standing around for so long.  Thankfully the police officer in front of us was quite nice and kept Paul amused by answering his questions about the difference between the Queen’s guards and the police officers and the weapons they were carrying, etc. 

The Queen (and the rest of the Royal Family) finally returned after over an hour, but sadly the carriages went back the same way they had come out so we didn’t get to see the Queen up close.  It was worth it to wait though, because the nice police officer we had been chatting with gave us a tip to go wait by the crosswalk as soon as the Queen returned for the barricades to be taken down so everyone could go right up to the gates of Buckingham palace to see the Royal Family on the balcony.  Thanks to this tip, we ended up among the first people to get to the gates and got a decent view!  After the Queen and her husband came out on the balcony and waved, the rest of the Royal Family joined them and they stayed there as several RAF jets did a flypast to conclude the ceremony, which was quite neat to see.

When the excitement of the Queens birthday was over, we caught the tube to Camden Town, a district in the northern part of London which is famous for its seven street markets.  Although it’s an interesting place to buy clothes, books, antiques and other junk, we didn’t spend much time shopping because it was so crowded and the people running the stalls were so aggressive that I avoided asking how much stuff was unless I really wanted to know. 

Tired of walking, we decided to hop on a bus instead of walking back to the Camden Tube station.  Since the bus would not get us back to the Apollo theatre, we got off at the next major Tube station, but then found out the Tube line for this area was not running for the weekend because of system upgrades!  I don’t know of any other major city where they close an entire section of the public transportation system on a Saturday during the busy tourist season.  First the strike, now the inconvenient system upgrades! Seriously, who designed this stupid Tube system?!?!

With help from the people at the Tube station, we figured out how to catch 2 buses to get to the theatre, in time for our show.  The London production of Wicked was, in our opinion, not as good as the version we saw in New York, but front row seats were a totally different experience from the upper balcony seats we bought last time for a lot more money. It was neat to be so close to the stage and see the costumes and cast up close!  Although 3rd row seats would have provided a better view, I can’t justify paying 10x as much for a ticket!  If only they had cheap seats like these for Broadway shows, I would spend a lot more time in New York!