Day 18- The End...Let it Be

And so it was! In summary, today was 3 art galleries, 2 churches, 1 tourist trap market, a great "last supper" at a pub on the West End, and a FAB-4 show!
No TV here to watch news to hear the British newscasters complain about the heat... but read about some soldiers dying in training, and do wonder how many older folks suffered to the end! It's a scorcher! And once again, we are in our deathly still and stifling room for the last night... but we won't let it cast a shadow on our fabulous final day.

We totally enjoyed the National Gallery. Wish I could have taken pix of the awesome pieces we so enjoyed. We bought postcards of some of the most amazing, including my fave Degas, and some of these: Botticelli, Michaelangelo, Raphael, Holdbein, Da Vinci, Rubens, Van Dyck, The Monets and Manet, Renoir, Seurat, Van Gogh, Cezanne! (I just rattled those off by memory) Such awesomeness! (And thanks RS guidebook for the highlights tour!)
More was to be enjoyed at the lesser known Courtauld Gallery. RS said it would be free on Monday until 2 pm (not true anymore)-- but 3 pound Monday wasn't so bad. We're glad we did it because they allowed photos! (How strange!) Here are a few between my camera and Ken's.

Next was the interesting but too touristy Covent Garden-- a shopping market since Medieval times... with every modern store imaginable (like Build-a-Bear, Disney Store, and an Apple Store). We had a soda and some bread just to get us to the next stop and then we beat it out of there. Wanted to catch St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church which is lovely. Each church is so unique. We had a good rest stop here and enjoyed the shop.

We also caught "The Actor's Church" which was another St. Paul's. Just an interesting combination of theater and church going on there. I guess they've found their target ministry.

We enjoyed the National Portrait Gallery more than we thought we would. The modern portraits, including Duchess of Cambridge Kate, and everyone from Philip Glass to young Sir Paul McCartney-- all very cool. As you go up the floors, you go later back in history to Great Britain figures-- fabulous. I might have accidentally snapped this photo of the Bronte Sisters. I didn't snap of photo of the Wesley portrait or Bill Shakespeare-- drat! GREAT to see them all.

So those were the 3 galleries-- crazy amount of walking! What I didn't mention here yet is the first thing we did when we got off the tube in the West End was to see a discount or last-min theater ticket booth. That's where we purchased our LET IT BE tix. SO glad we did! It was a great concert through the ages of Beatles music. There was really only one song we didn't know pretty much all of the words!

Before the concert we ate our last London dinner at a pub (recommended by St. Steves of the Lutheran Weed Smokers) directly across the street from St. Martin's, called Chandos. We ate upstairs on comfy sofas in what was called the Opera Room. I had one last fish and chips and Ken had the bangers and mash. The fish and chips always comes with peas by the way-- interesting. Sitting next to us was a Londoner hipster and a visiting American young man. Somehow (ok, it was me) we started chatting and found out the London guy is a magician. Another group of Americans got involved and he did the most amazing card tricks... dinner and a show before a show!

I'm not feeling clever enough to type a final conclusion, so I'll save that for our long day of travel (and waiting) for tomorrow... but allow us to leave you with this very fitting song neither Ken nor I realized was a Beatles tune-- we feel so lame! We heard it in pub (a re-recording by a female and male) and were like, "Oh isn't this a neat song!" DUH-- then it came up at this show... it will be special to us now! :) Here is a live version of the duet we heard first in Bath: