Very busy Tuesday

Writing this Wednesday morning.  It's raining and we're actually not sad about it.  We don't mind being confined to the apartment for a while since Tuesday was so busy.  Here's Tuesday:

1. Took the tube over to Leicester Square to buy 1/2 priced play tickets to see The King's Speech.
2. Walked over to Covent Garden.  Was another market area.  Got there and it was mainly T shirts and then moderately higher end chain stores.  Didn't spend much time there.
3. Found our way to Neal's Yard.  They're known for the cheese shop.  But, it gets mentioned in on of my favorite books, Pattern Recognition.  The cheeses looked and smelled great and we were tempted to buy some for dinner, but knew we'd be going through security at Parliament (see below) and didn't think it prudent...
4. By getting lost found our way to the Tottenham Court Tube stop.  This was significant since an apartment we very seriously considered was there.  The apartment manager swore to us that it wasn't noisy and made us feel that we were being excessively cautious, but got there to discover an ENORMOUS construction pit and numerous cranes.  We're extremely glad we rejected that place even though it was more modern and larger than where we ended up.
5. Walked down past the National Portrait Gallery and stopped in for a 1/2 hour portion of a free lunchtime concert at St. Martin-in-the-Fields.  Unless I've got the wrong place, I have several CD's that I'd bought years ago that were recorded there!
6. Walked through Westminster area (past 10 Downing where Hugh Grant lived in Love Actually -- the Prime Minister's residence).
7. Got to Parliament.  Maxine had contacted the US Embassy a month before we left so we could get in here.  The House of Commons is the US House of Representatives and the House of Lords is the US Senate.  You're allowed to sit in on public debates, but they are very limiting in how many people can attend.  So, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the US Embassy gets 4 tickets/day and we got 2 of them.  Got there just before 2pm and in around 3:15 -- lots of security and waiting.  But, it was worth it to see their gov't in action.  Our tickets were for the House of Commons but we'd noticed not many people waiting at the House of Lords line when we went in, so we asked if we could go there too.  Great experience.  The British gov't seems lots more accessible than the US.  Not sure if that's a characteristic of the smaller population or a better structure. 
8. Home (the apartment).  Rest.  Out to see The King's Speech.  The culmination of the play (also a movie with Colin Firth) was the King's speech in Sept 1939.  So, it was conceivable that there could have been people in the audience who'd actually heard the speech when it was originally given.  I really enjoyed the play, and the idea of seeing it performed in London less than a mile from where the speech had been given.

A long day Tuesday, so a slow Wednesday!