London: Day 5

Today I got to speak to Ange again - yay!! It's really nice to talk to everyone back home - rather than just send emails and SMS'. But I don't think it's going to be able to continue for the next week or so, because I'm moving around so much

Today's plan was pretty much to do everything that I hadn't done so far - namely the Tate Modern and Covent Garden. So that's where I started, buying some tacky souvenirs in the process. To be honest, Covent Garden doesn't do a lot for me during the day, but I'm sure at night it's awesome, because there are SO many cafes and bars.

As with every day this week I've had lunch outside, and once again it was along the Thames. This time in front of the rebuilt Globe Theatre, as I was seeing a matinee performace of 'The Comedy of Errors' there. The performance itself was fantastic - all the actors were suberb. The only downside was there was little interaction with the 'groundlings' - those of us who stood directly in front of the stage. For such a farcical play as CoE, it made sense to involve at least part of the audience (the play is perfect for those 'ooohs' and 'he's behind you' moments). Alas, they did not, but it was still amazing to be there. Another one of those 'I can't believe I'm actually doing this' moments. I can now definitely recommend the standing tickets (especially for 5 pounds) but only for the shorter plays - I wouldn't want to be standing for 3hrs+.

From the Globe, I walked down to the Tate Modern art gallery and had a look to see what all the fuss is about. It's an impressive building (an ex-power station) and contains some equally impressive 'art'. The only downside is every piece seems to be designed purely to question 'what is art', which gets a bit tedious. There are plenty of blank canvases (what is left out is important), slashed canvases (the black hole within as a reflection of empty modern lives) and toilet bowls (shit). Overall, though, I'd definitely recommend it and I really enjoyed spending the afternoon there - particularly as it had air-con!!

To cap an excellent day off I went with Camilla; her cousin and her friends; Jasmine (from Koln & NUS the semester before me); and Liz (a friend of Camilla's who is planning on going on exchange next semester) to dinner and clubbing. After much umming-and-aahing we ended up having Italian for dinner (really nice) and going to an underground hip-hop club near Piccadilly. Considering that was pretty much the first time I'd been clubbing since Singapore last year I had so much fun.

Tomorrow's my last day in London so I'm off to bed!