Thursday 16 May 2013

Exploring London - day 3

In the morning I visited the Guards' museum and got out just in time for the preparation of the changing of the guards

Inspection
 

The musicians warming up...


...and on the march

Buckingham Palace

I then went to the London Museum

English fashion 100 BC

Model of an Elizabethan era theatre

London taxi from 1908

The Lord Mayors state coach from 1757


That´s all folks. More pictures only after my next trip which hopefully won't be too far in the future.

Wednesday 15 May 2013

Exploring London - day 2



The Natural History Museum


 Even the windows are nicely sculpted


The Main Hall

The porter

 A human ancestor? The ground sloth

They have many dinosaur skeletons...


...and some live ones

Beautiful stones



There was a special exhibition of live exotic butterflies



On my way to St. James's Park I passed by the Guards' barracks where they exercised

St. James's Park


Westminster Abbey where I attended the Evensong. Even more impressive on the inside


That "other" Big Ben














Monday 13 May 2013

Exploring London - day 1

Here are some impressions from my wanderings in London:

Not sure if Freddie Mercury or Freddie Gold

Outside the British Museum

Grumpy Horus is grumpy
A Greek Tomb

The world-famous Rosetta Stone

The Royal Gold Cup
A Roman Mosaic, found in Dorset, England
It was Mummy-Day at the British Museum
After that I took a longer tour (I´d rather say Odyssey, thanks to the London Bus system) to a nice little spot you might recognize:

You don´t recognize it?

How about now?
Well, then read for yourself
And from the side...

The building to the left where they do rehearsals
Inside the church. Can you believe that this is home to one of the best choirs on earth?
And a bit closer

That´s all for now folks, hope you enjoyed the trip. The next post will be up shortly

Guildford - concert day

The crew began to set up everything for the concert in the morning.


As you can see, there are actually two levels, with two sets of steps in the back, over which the boys would enter the stage.


With the stage finished, the crew conducted light and sound tests. It was interesting to see the effort they put into the show.


At about 4 pm the cathedral was closed for the public and some began queuing outside. After about half an hour or so.. Look who's coming


The boys arrived for their rehearsal. In the course of the day, they actually arrived three times, don´t know if they had to postpone a part of the rehearsal.






We had to wait for a few hours more before we could finally enter the cathedral for the concert. Because they had used smoke before and we had a brilliant sunset, the rays looked splendid.


The show itself was brilliant, there were so many new kids and newfound talents to discover. I already tweeted about my highlights, which were a brilliant "I vow to thee" with a solo from Mathew J., their new song "I'm dreaming of home" and a fantastic "Mysterium".

 I noticed that not all the boys were always on the stage. When they formed a V one time with all of them, one stood actually a bit to the side, I don´t know if on purpose or because they just didn´t fit on the stage in that formation. 

Besides the songs even their little speeches are getting better. While I remembered some things from last year, the comedy duo Cassius/Michael seems to have developed a better timing/repertoire. They even performed some bits from their rehearsal exercises. I loved it and so did the rest of the audience. As the cathedral was nearly sold out and even all(!) of the programs had been sold by the time of the interval, this concert should have been a financial success as well.

Unfortunately they kind of rushed away from the stage after only one encore with not much time for taking pictures. Here's what I managed to shoot anyway. I apologize in advance for the bad quality.