January at the ballet

I grew up going to the ballet with my mom and, most specially, every Christmas with my grandparents.  My grandmother, Virginia, was sometimes the backstage doctor for the Cleveland Ballet and we were lucky enough to go to their performance of the Nutcracker every year.  It was magical and something that we--the kids-- looked forward to every year (in addition to our annual 'all you can eat at Dunkin' Donuts' outing with VA which ended abruptly one year after we ate all we could eat and then, having contracted the flu, barfed it up all over their house.  We were off donuts for a lot of years after that).

Evie has been taking ballet since she was two and a half and, but it wasn't until this year that we thought she was finally old enough to sit through a real ballet and enjoy it.  So, with great excitement, we made plans for Millie to stay with a friend and Jim and I took Evie into Central London to see the Royal Ballet's Alice in Wonderland.

 Covent Garden is full of historic places. Here we are, outside a really old and low ceilinged pub, messing up the picture the ladies behind us are trying to take.

 And on a side road in the rain.

 Evie had never been to the Royal Opera House, so it was pretty exciting for her. We saved the good side for her grand entrance.

 As usual, we spent a lot of money on street performers (but these guys were good).

 And we had an elegant French lunch (although the Birthday Girl chose chicken fingers as her main course)...

 with a side of the thickest hot chocolate known to man.

 After some messing around outside, we finally went into the Royal Opera House!

 We climbed lots of stairs to our nosebleed seats. These nosebleed seats actually gave us a great view of the stage, but I strongly discourage everyone from getting box seats on the side of the stage.  The last time we went to the ballet, while we got four pretty inexpensive seats, we all had to cram into one corner and lean over the side of the box in a dangerous way, to see what was happening.  So nosebleeds all the way!

In England,  it's customary to eat ice cream during the intermission of performances.  It took us a while to find it, but this was definitely a highlight for our ballerina.  She did regret choosing ginger ice cream, though, so we made a trade (I had vanilla).

 The ballet was fun, whimsical, had amazing sets, and lots of colorful costumes and exciting dancing. It was the perfect introduction for a little girl to a real  ballet performance.  When we left Evie said, 'I want to do that!'  Whether or not she makes a career of ballet, I know that this performance was just the beginning of something we'll enjoy doing together for the rest of our lives. And that makes me really happy!