It's smaller than a lot of them (at least I think so, I haven't seen other Easter Island statues, except in pictures), maybe 15 feet or so high, but also incredibly well preserved, because it spent most of its pre-museum life in a chief's house.
Our afternoon was our final play, Fanny and Alexander at the Old Vic Theatre. It is a stage adaptation of an Ingmar Bergman film, with all of Bergman's Scandinavian gloominess and his symbolism. We chose it at the last minute, based on a tube poster, because of the cast -- Penelope Wilton and Kevin Boyle from Downton Abbey and Michael Pennington, a noted British stage actor whom we had seen before in Lear. What we didn't manage to read before we got to the theatre was that the play is three and a half hours long! Not sure I would have chosen it if I had realized that, but we sat enthralled through all three acts. Fanny and Alexander are two young children (I would guess the "stage ages" to be about 5 and 8, and the actors to be about 7 and 11, assuming they were small for their ages). Fanny doesn't have much in the way of lines, but Alexander is the focus of much of the play. In short, it's about a semi-happy family of actors, including the lover of the matriarch, an old Jewish guy who runs a magic shop (symbolism alert). When the children's father dies, the mother, who is trying to find herself (symbolism alert) marries a strict and cruel bishop (symbolism alert) who mistreats the children (big symbolism alert). The old Jewish guy helps them escape, the mother gets out too, and they live somewhat unhappily ever after.
The cast was fantastic and despite the heavyhandedness of the story, it was compelling to watch. I enjoyed it as much as Hamilton, though I suspect it isn't for everyone. The descriptions of the meals they ate (narrated) were both comedy gold and detailed enough to make me hungry (the play would have been at least 15 minutes shorter without them). You could have fed a small village with one of their meals.
We had our final dinner in London at The Five Fields, a restaurant I found online, but turns out to be a Michelin one-star. We had the three course prix fixe menu (the other option was an 8 course tasting menu, though the portions of that were small enough that I don't think it was significantly more food than we had). Both the food and wine were superb. We both started with the foie gras, which came with pieces of beet and some pickled mushrooms, that sounded weird but cut the richness of the foie gras very well, I had mutton (chosen for the accompaniments, but it was nicely tender and flavorful) and Jay had venison. Our desserts were a rhubarb concoction that is hard to describe. It was good, but not rhubarby enough for me. Jay had a chocolate decadence with sesame ice cream. There were the usual amuse bouches, pre dessert, chocolate after dessert (we could have had a cheese course, but skipped that) and they sent us home with two cannelles. It wasn't cheap, but after our disappointment with almost all of our London eating (J Sheekey was good, but not as good as this place), it was great to end on a high note.
Thursday we leave for Frankfurt, to spend a day catching up on laundry at the airport. On Friday it's on to Naples for a few days before we start our Amalfi Coast walking tour.
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