Well, that was all rather fun. Neither of us had been to the ballet before, so when dad offered tickets we jumped at it. In fairness we were supposed to be watching it at the Opera Garnier in Paris, which is why we went to France back in May. That didn’t happen – no tickets.

Anyhow, it gave us a chance to see inside the Royal Opera House, which we’ve walked past so many times but never entered. It’s quite fab, and the view of the plaza from the terrace of the Ampitheatre Bar is the best view of Covent Garden going.

…and the view of the champagne bar downstairs isn’t so tatty, either. Good job we wore our smarts, not that we spent much time down there.

So, the ballet. We didn’t really know what to expect, which might have been a good thing, as we went with open minds.

It was the Bolshoi doing Don Quixote, so a pretty high standard for your first experience, and it didn’t disappoint. Well, not us, anyway, but dad had seen better (he’s seen a lot) and to be honest we could see where he was coming from when he said that the end of it would have been done better if they’d headed back to the village for the wedding scene.

There’s not a great deal of story to Don Quixote, and it seems to be a bit of an excuse for showing off how good a dancer you are – kind of like Cirque du Soliel on tip-toes – but that makes it all the more impressive. Random fact: when they pirouette on the tips of their shoes their big toes feel the force of 2 tonnes… and they did a lot of pirouetting.

Even if it weren’t for the ballet, the Opera House alone would be a good enough reason to visit. It’s truly beautiful building, with parts dating back to the 1700s. It’s also a lot bigger than you’d expect. The stage itself is fairly conservative (and only around a third the size of its rival in Paris) but the tiers and boxes seat over 2200 people, and everyone gets a good view.

Would we go again? Most certainly. We even looked up what was on at the Theatre Royal in Norwich last night…