Anne Abroad--The Sequel: The Hills Are Alive

Well, you can take the girl out of Arkansas, but you can't take the Arkansas out of the girl.

We made plans to go see the Sound of Music today since it is closing some time in March. It was something that Skip had really been wanting to see. So last night, Skip asks me, "Before or after the play, can we go to Church's?" Well, of course, I'm thinking fried chicken and racking my brain trying to think where on earth there was a Church's Fried Chicken in London. He sees the look of my face and finally says, "You're thinking chicken, aren't you?" Then I realized that he was talking about Church's Shoes--a very posh English shoe company with a store on Oxford Street near the theater.

So we went into London today on the number 94 double decker bus and stopped off at Church's (shoes, not chicken) and even braved Hamley's toy store in order to buy a birthday present for Maddie's friend who has a party coming up.

Then we hit the Palladium Theater and the Sound of Music. The set was really cool. At the beginning and the end, they had this huge disc that created the "hills" effect. It could lift up and down, slant one way or the other and even rotate. The effect was amazing. And while the actress who played Maria was good, the one who played the Mother Superior left her movie counterpart in the dust. What a voice! The kids were really good as well. And the scenes when the nuns were singing sounded incredible.

When we asked Maddie if she liked it, she said, "Of course I liked it. It was a musical."

After the play, we had dinner at the ubiquitous Bella Italia. It's an Italian chain here in London that's nothing extraordinary, but always good and fairly inexpensive.

And then, of course, getting home was not as simple has hopping back on the bus we came in on. We waited and waited for the 94 and three of them passed us with the words "not in service" displayed. We waited so long that Maddie had to go to the bathroom. The closest one to us was the Oxford Circus Top Shop. For such a trendy store, they have crummy bathrooms. As we walked to the next bus stop up from the TopShop, we realize that construction is keeping the 94 from running part of its route. So we get on the first underground train we can find and take it to Shepherd's Bush Station where we can finally catch the 94 the rest of the way to home. We really lucked out, though. Right after we finished the 10 minute walk home from the bus stop, the wind begin to howl like I have never heard.

Other than the long trip home, it was a most enjoyable day in London for the family.