rusty_halo

Here’s my first post of vacation photos from my two week trip to Sheffield, London, and Paris.

I left on Thursday, September 30. My trip consisted of me lugging a gigantic suitcase onto the L train, onto the G train, to work, then onto the F train, onto the A train, onto the Air Train, checking the suitcase at JFK Airport, flying to Iceland, going through security and passport control in Iceland (where it was dawn and the airport was nearly deserted), flying to Manchester, retrieving my gigantic suitcase, taking the train to Sheffield, and lugging said gigantic suitcase through the rain for a ten minute walk to my hotel. As you can probably imagine, I was barely functional at this point, but I was also starving, and thankfully there was a Wagamama next to my hotel. (I love England. There are at least three chains--Wagamama, Pizza Express, and Eat--where I can easily get vegan food.) So I ate, then crashed for sixteen hours. When I woke up, it was Saturday morning and I was totally refreshed and non-jetlagged.

So I spent the day in Sheffield. It's really nice there; everything I did was walking distance from the town center, which is where the train station, my hotel, and the theater were. They've clearly put a lot of money into making the downtown people-friendly, with walkable streets and gardens and fountains and a big random ferris wheel. I went to its winter gardens, visited the cathedral, and stopped by several little museums--a museum of tea, of metalwork, and of nifty things John Ruskin wanted the local workers to see--and then ate surprisingly good vegan food at a local hippie-ish place.

My hotel was lovely--a boys' school converted into a boutique hotel full of amenities including French press coffee with SOY MILK, and an English breakfast where I could eat mushrooms, beans, roasted tomatoes, actual good fresh fruit, nuts, prunes, etc... all included in my nightly rate of 62 pounds!

Hamlet was fabulous. I was in the second row, at eye level with the actors. John Simm was amazing, full of rage and tragic vulnerability and dark humor with a glint of cruelty. He was perfect for the part--I was actually far more deeply moved by him than by David Tennant, although the RSC's overall production was better. Here I really liked the Ophelia (she had a depth and seriousness that made her breakdown very sad) and the Polonius (he was amusing but also skeevy enough that you could see why Hamlet was so nasty to him). But the Laertes was terrible (he spoke in a monotone!) and Claudius and Horatio were both pretty bad.

Still, it was so worth it for Simm, who was the best Hamlet I've ever seen. I went to the stage door afterward, not expecting anything, and he just walked out! There were maybe 20-30 people hoping for an autograph, nothing like the Tennant mob scene. Sadly I wasn't able to get a program (they sold out! and wouldn't ship one to the US for me!) but I had him sign my ticket and told him how wonderful and amazing he was, and he thanked me for coming and he was so sincere and gorgeous and ♥♥♥. It was totally worth the trip; I just wish I'd seen it more than once.

View from the Wheel of Sheffield: