London: Day two

We took our time getting out this morning, which gave Caroline and Annie's little sister Callie some time to hang out. They played with Play-Doh and made jewelry and got along like fast friends:



Once in London for the day, we stopped in Waterloo for a coffee/hot chocolate:



Just like yesterday, we headed immediately to Leicester Square to get our matinee tickets for the day and then took off for some recreational shopping:



Harrod's was amazing, as always. We spent most of our time in the toy and book department and then left in a rush to make it to the theater. Caroline had been hoping to ride in a taxi, so she was quite pleased with this:



Annabelle and the rodents enjoyed the ride as well:



We arrived back in the West End with hardly any time to spare before the show, so we popped into a little Italian cafe for chocolate cake and eclairs to go.

Today's show? Jersey Rodents!



Oh, wait, I mean Jersey Boys! Once again, I was impressed with the intimacy of the theater. Even from our less-than-stellar seats, we had no trouble telling which actor was speaking or singing. The curtain call was unlike any I had ever seen before. After the standing ovation, the actor playing Frankie Valli took the mic and gave a little speech. Turns out that today was the final performance for several of the actors, who are leaving the London production to join the show on tour. Frankie talked a little about each actor and then passed the mic to the actor playing Bob Gaudio. Annabelle and I were shocked when he started speaking and turned out to be Scottish. (I know, it's silly--why shouldn't a Scot be able to do a Jersey accent?--but there you have it. It kind of reminded me of when I took the kids to see a Pippi Longstocking movie in German and the thing that impressed them the most was: "How on earth did they teach that parrot German?!")

On the train on the way home, I saw this ad, which I thought was kind of cool (click to make it bigger):



We had a Girls' Nite Out for supper tonight, as we joined Carrie, Annie, and Callie for peri peri chicken at Nando's. I was glad that Annabelle and Annie got a chance to catch up with each other:



Those 2 were thick as thieves during our San Antonio years, but hadn't seen each other since we met up for a week at Disney during Fred's first deployment:



They've grown into such lovely young ladies!