London is an expensive city. One of the most expensive in the world. With limited funds, that can sometimes make it hard to do things. Yesterday though, we stumbled on something to go and observe at Covent Garden. May Fayre!
Sure, It was slightly later than a normal May Day celebration, but that suited us fine. We were expecting a Punch and Judy festival, at St Paul's Church.(See right).
Covent Garden is also known for the street performers who perform out the front of St Pauls, and can be observed from the outdoor terrace of the Punch and Judy Tavern, which looks down over the forecourt of the church.
So off we went, onto the Tube (£1.80 each)to the Covent Garden station. When we first got there, we couldn't see anything going on, so headed out behind the church (which looks something like this)
We happened to walk in right on time for the commencement of a May Pole dance! We'd both heard about these, but never seen one before. It was definitely an enjoyable experience, but not necessarily something you'd always want to see or do. Very bright colours, ribbons going backwards and forwards, lots of skipping.
Then we wandered on through the garden, to try and watch some of the Punch and Judy shows. There must have been about 15 booths all up, and we assume they rotated their times, but only watched for about 5 minutes. The show we saw, it was really hard to understand the talking, but it did remind me of Sooty and Sweep.
We figured the next best thing to do would be to sit and watch the performers, so we caught the very end of one performance, then an entire secondary performance, before wandering off to walk back to Leicester Square (which was open again!) and catch the tube home.
Overall, for a cost of about £14 (a pint and 2 tube rides each) it was a relatively cheap way to spend the afternoon. Would have been cheaper if I wasn't an alcoholic.. :P
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