London - Day 1, British Library & Wicked

Ricky and I were lucky enough to take a trip to England to attend a trade show. We, of course, tried to squeeze in a few extra days so that we could go site seeing before we had to head home. This was my first time to the UK and Ricky had been before but when he was much younger. We had one full day in London before we headed up north to Harrogate.  After an overnight flight we landed at 7 am and took a traditional black taxi for 90 minutes to our hotel.  Unfortunately we arrived at rush hour traffic so we got to experience that.  Not fun. We checked into our little column framed hotel and headed out on the town.  It was a pretty cold day and we were tired from our travels so we decided to pick one thing to do then head back to the room for a nap before heading back out for a dinner and show.

We started the day with a visit to the British Library. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures of any of the exhibits but Ricky did manage to snap a few shots of the inside of the building. We ended up staying there for a couple of hours between having lunch and viewing the exhibits that included the Magna Carta, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, early Bibles including the Codex Sinaticus, music by the Beatles and Handel's Messiah, Da Vinci's notebooks and much more. Seeing the Codex Sinaticus was Ricky's favorite part.  He just got a replicated copy of it for Christmas last year. It was pretty fascinating to see.  It was a great stop and something I'd recommend to anyone visiting London.

After a much needed and very delightful nap in our single beds of our hotel room, we headed out for dinner in Leicester Square. We ended up finding Nando's which is a portuguese flavored restaurant and it was delicious! It seemed to be well known to the locals and we later found out they are all over the UK...and a few on the east coast.  It was the perfect meal right before seeing Wicked!!  It was my third time seeing Wicked and I loved it! I've seen it in NY, LA and now London. It's still one of my all time favorite musicals. First day in London was a success!

 A look at our room in the Byron Hotel

The main lobby of the British Library.

 Ricky at Nando's

Wicked at the Apollo Victoria Theater.

At the theater waiting for Wicked!