The Royal Albert Hall

Continuing our journey through Albertopolis we had tea and a tour of the Royal Albert Hall. The tea was certainly not up to Claridge's standards. However it did revive us. We walked across the street and visited the Albert Memorial. It has a giant gilded statue of Prince Albert in the centre. The carved marble structures on each of the four corners represents the people's of the world. The Hall has a royal charter to bring art music and technology to the people. Not only do they have musical performances but a good many of the events are lectures. For instance the Dali Lama gave a talk at the Royal Albert Hall. While we were there, a symphony was practicing for the BBC Proms. As such we were not allowed to take pictures of the interior while that was going on. However they had a video display at the end and I was able to take some pictures of that to show everyone the interior region.  There are well over 400 performances of one sort or another in this very large complex. Our tour guide even said that they have had performances on a loading dock!  One very interesting detail was there there was not enough money left over from the great exhibition to finish the hall. The architect came up on the idea to sell subscriptions to seats for £100 each. The subscription lasts for 999 years. He was able to sell 1300 of these seats. Queen Victoris bought 20 of them herself and the majority of them are still in private ownership. That means the descendants of these people get to go to over 60 percent of the performances at the Royal Albert Hall.  The pipe organ affectionately known as the voice of Jupiter has 9999 pipes.

Because the Royal Albert Hall is circular some of the surrounding buildings had to adapt to the shape of the street

Yet another super expensive automobile

Here it is

At the right is the gateway with the carriages used to drive straight into

There is no end to the beautiful architecture

Yes those are tiny people at the front of this gate. It shows you how large the structure really is

The Royal College of Organists

I not see these ancient Greeks playing the organ

Here's where we had our tea

And now presenting the afternoon tea

Each table had different China settings.  The settings were the same on the table but each table was different

Come to the Royal Albert Hall for tea

 the sweets

The Savories

A chocolate on the top of one of the sweets

I love the Musical theme

The Royal Albert Hall is the largest dining room, the largest movie theatre, the only place outside Japan to have a sanctioned Sumo match. 

The Albert Memorial

Very cool little puffball flowers

Kudos to London for all the Flowers

This tree had branches that were very oddly shaped and leaves that seemed to be wilted

One of the four corner sculptures

Lots of gold

Even the fence around the memorial is gilded 

A piece of art reminiscent of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band where previous performers are all juxtaposed here on the single canvas

We were not supposed to take pictures but who could miss not taking a picture of the Queen

Acoustic structures on the ceiling of the performance Hall. Known for notoriously poor acoustics they had a 6 second echo until these structures were able to fix it

How the interior would look like if we were able to take pictures of it

Not the actual symphony orchestra that was practicing 

Our tour guide

Built on a grand scale 

Here is where the beer doth flow

A chandelier at the Royal entrance

The Queen's buttocks may have actually sat here in the Royal antichamber. The word about town is that gin and tonics are favored 

Beautiful pastel colours

Lots of stairs on the tour

Another giant chandelier

Princess Diana was the patron of the royal Ballet. Here's a picture of her at the Royal Albert Hall

The top floor has sa standing room only area. This area's ticket only cost £6 and so these people are lined up to get to the seats for the performance later that day