#riverside studios

Photo by Douglas Denoff

okay i’m gonna tell you what happened because i need to document this…

Even outside of the play this ended up being such a great trip and I'm so glad that Andy finally gave me a (very good) reason to go! I went with one of my best friends (and our husbands tagged along, lol) and even though we barely had two months to commit and plan and it was only a five day trip, it was absolutely worth it and I think at least weekly about going back.

At the airport everything was thankfully super smooth - January weather cooperated, flight attendant strike averted a couple of weeks prior, everything running on time - this was my first time travelling overseas (and my husband does not travel well even at the best of times) so this was very much appreciated, and once we got to our gate we had tons of time so my friend and I did multiple loops around the airport while we waited for our redeye flight.

Not surprisingly I didn't sleep much, but I still got bit (thank you Myth Busters for proving that even resting your eyes still counts!) and the morning started of pretty darn nice with a view of the sun rising over Ireland. 💜

Day 1

Once we got checked in and dropped our luggage in our rooms (and figured out how the lights worked lol), we hit the ground running and walked about 15 minutes to the Museum of Natural History for our first touristy visit, and isn't the first thing you see when you walk in a Blue whale!

I'll try not to bore with too many random pictures, but it's also my post so I do what I want. And I like shiny things. 😊

Day 2

The next morning after breakfast at our hotel we went for a walk up to Kensington Gardens while we waited for the bus tour we'd booked to start. I didn't even realize until we got home from the trip that we'd walked by the Royal Albert Hall, but I did happen to take a picture of it! This of course is where many an award show has been held, and where Andy received his BAFTA for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema in February of 2020, and where he played his saxophone on stage with Katherine Jenkins for her Christmas concert in 2022. 💕

At the end of of our bus tour we took the ferry from the Tower Bridge back to Kensington Bridge before heading back to our hotel to get ready for dinner and the play (!!). Thanks to a very sleuthy friend, David Robey's building from "Luther: The Fallen Sun" was identified 😏 and while you can't actually see it from the river since it's hidden behind a smaller building (below the arrow), just to the left you could see the building with the weird windows that he's creepily looking at in this shot from the film.

THE PLAY!!

Saturday night was of course the pièce de résistance, the reason for this whole damn trip and dragging my husband and friends across the Atlantic Ocean: Ulster American!

Y'all. Y'ALL. Y'all it was so good. Like SO fucking good. I saw one very simple post that said was something along the lines of "I was stressed out the entire time and I loved every second of it", and yeah I would say that's 100% accurate. 😂

In interviews Andy mentioned that the set was very much inspired by his own home so I'm sure he had a few props that were his own sprinkled around (and if you look closely at some of the promo shots you can seen a few photos of him and his family hidden in there, too). Every inch of that stage was used, and all of the choreography from the fight at the end to just simply how everyone moved around in the space was so intentional and clearly thought out. The end was fucking wild and even though I had been generally spoiled so it wasn't quite as shocking as I'm sure it was for some, it was still so satisfying. I support women's rights and wrongs 😌 (and she was absolutely right, just be clear).

Seriously, every bit of it was amazing, and thank god everyone agreed! It was so cool to see Woody Harrelson, too, and Louisa Harland blew me right the fuck away. I'm so beyond grateful that I was able to see Andy perform on stage because who knows if/when that will ever happen again with how damn busy that man is! And while I didn't manage to meet him afterwards I still got to have him sign my program and tell him how good it and he was when I met him at the Denver con. 🥰💖

Day 3

Stonehenge

This was at my husband's request because "if you're going to go to London to see your boyfriend in a play, I'm going to Stonehenge". I obviously had no problem with this since I've always wanted to go! We ended up being incredibly lucky that we decided to go as early in the day as we could because our tour bus was actually the very first one there, which meant that when we walked up it was completely quiet save a couple of security people (and all the rooks and the sheep, of course).

The RA

This one was actually spontaneous because although I had tried to fit it in I eventually resigned myself to not being able to make it work with our schedule (it's closed on Mondays and that was the day that we were going to be in the area 😢).

BUT.

On Sunday afternoon after getting back from Stonehenge the Mr wanted to take a nap and our friends were off doing something else. We didn't have anywhere to be until our next tourist outing in the evening so I realized that I suddenly had about four hours to kill, and after doing a quick search I figured out that it was a 20 minute tube ride away, so I decided to go on a last-minute solo adventure in London to:

The Royal Academy of Art, which is where the opening scene of "Luther" was filmed. 😳

It's a smaller gallery (that is also, as the name indicates, a school) so it was the perfect size for a quick afternoon trip. After checking out every nook and cranny I could find I went down to the café and got myself a pot of tea and snack, and sat in the back corner and people watched for a little while longer (which felt rather apropos).

White Chapel

Our evening adventure was a Jack the Ripper tour in White Chapel, and by now I was old hat at figuring out the tube which my friends appreciated! Our guide was pretty fantastic, he was so knowledgeable while also being sensitive to the fact that the graphic details might be a bit much for some people so he checked in regularly to make sure everyone was good, and made sure to also acknowledge the reasons these women were targeted and why it took so long for the police to bother to take it seriously. Because y'know, the misogyny of it all. 🤷

After stopping for a drink at The Hoop and Grapes which is the oldest pub in London we made our way back, at which point the storm that had been threatening all night (it fuckin WIMDY) finally hit, and since we nearly got blown into the street by the wind and rain we decided to just grab sandwiches and chips (crisps!) from the Tesco's up the street and have a quiet dinner in our hotel. Definitely a great day, overall!

Day 4

Apparently this was also The David Robey trip, because here's the next stop:

Piccadilly Circus

After breakfast at a little Lebanese café around the corner from our hotel, my bestie and I had pretty much the whole Monday afternoon/evening to ourselves while our partners had their own thing planned. It was perfect since we hadn't really had a chance to just walk around the city for more than a couple short outings to explore here and there, so we made our way from Covent Garden down to Piccadilly Circus.

Naturally I made her take a picture of me sitting on the fountain, then we wandered around the shops, got something to eat at a pub on Oxford Street called The Spread Eagle 😂, found the street where the hostel she stayed in was when she'd visited in her twenties (it's still there!), and then stopped a couple more pubs, lol. It was a gorgeous night for it being late-January and we were surprised at how many people there were out and about even on a Sunday!

A little bit of trivia: They actually shut down the area completely to film this scene from the film, and they only other time that's happened was for "An American Werewolf in London" 40 years prior!

On our way back to meet up with our guys we walked past Leicester Square and the Odeon Cinema, which is where many a star-studded movie premiere that Andy has attended have been held. Then we accidentally went on a detour because I wasn't paying attention to the map, but we ended up walking through Covent Garden Mall which was very cool, so not a bad little side quest.

Unfortunately all good things do come to an end so sadly we eventually had to pack up to come home. Once again the airport was very chill, everything was on time and I got have a very tasty breakfast (eggs benedict on bao buns!) while we waited for our gate number to be announced. Truly it was such a wonderful trip and it pretty much went as well as it possible could have, and while I 100% would have gone on my own lol, it was lovely to do it all with my husband and friends along with me. (bless them for supporting my insanity)

Bye, London, I'll miss you! 😭

If you made it this far, congratulations! You may have One (1) selfie as a treat.

Joan Brossa: Words are Things. Poems, Objects and Installations, Text by Judith Winter, and Andrés Sánchez Robayna, The Riverside Studios, London, 1992 [Art Books & Ephemera. Art: © Fundació Joan Brossa / VEGAP, Barcelona]