When our plane landed, December 30, the sun was shining, but the 31st, our first real day in London, was umbrella weather. It didn’t discourage us, or the crowd watching a band from (I’m guessing) the Philippines doing synchronized manoeuvres in Trafalgar Square.
We went to our first play that evening at the Old Vic, Fortune’s Fool, by Turgenev. We thought we’d have a pleasant, inexpensive dinner at the Young Vic, but the cafe was closed. So we walked along the South Bank to one of our favorite restaurants, TAS, across the road from the Globe Theatre. They serve Anatolian cuisine, specializing in many varieties of pide (a little like pizza with its sides turned up. It’s very reasonable in price, with lovely decor, friendly staff, and a musician playing Turkish music on two unusual instruments. Later, I talked to the musician, who identified the one as a Baglama, also called a Saz (played like a guitar with a pick) and the other, violin-like but held vertically, as a Kemane. He drew little pictures for me and wrote the names — that’s how I know.
After dinner, we walked along the South Bank. The rain had stopped, and there was a lustrous light over all.
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