After a delightful weekend with Aunt Flo and Uncle Jack, we left Salt Lake City and drove west across the vast flat land that was once the floor of Lake Bonneville to Great Basin National Park. Discovered that the road to the Bristlecone Pine Forest was closed due to the weekend’s snow and had to settle for a look at a thirty year old baby bristlecone and forego a look at the oldest living trees in the world. Then headed further west across US 50 to Reno, Nevada, on a beautiful moonlit night.
Ever since its debut on Broadway the two of us have wanted to see “Wicked the Musical”. Today we realized that dream. In the Apollo Victoria Theater in London’s West End we were witness to the incredible prequel to The Wizard of Oz, the story of the Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West.
London’s National Portrait Gallery’s temporary exhibition, “Six Lives: The Stories of Henry VIII’s Queens” presents an amazing collection of portraits, jewelry, personal effects, books, costumes, and more to illustrate not only the lives of the six women who married the second Tudor king, but the effort across five centuries to keep their memory alive.
The purpose of our trek to Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham in the southwest of London was to see a recently recovered bronze bust of the Emperor Caligula but we discovered so much more in the recently restored 18th Century “little Gothic castle” built by Horace Walpole.
I LOVE that picture of the moon – so eerie and beautiful at the same time!