By Ourselves in London (sort of)

Friday we slept in a bit since our tour with Globus was over and we didn’t have to follow their schedule - that was nice. At breakfast we ran into a number of folks from our group who were getting ready to fly back home that day - so we ended up saying a bunch of goodbyes. This was a good group to travel with, no one really got on our nerves or caused problems, and there were some new friendships struck up in these past 11 days.

Beth and I took advantage of our hotel’s location to walk to Baker Street (only a few blocks away) where we found the Sherlock Holmes Museum. The supposed address of the fictional detective was 221B Baker Street. There actually never existed such an address, but in a building closest to that address a museum was developed. They had most of the rooms set up like they would have been in Sherlock Holmes day - with lots of antiques to set the mood. If was fun walking up and down the creaking staircase and seeing all the paraphernalia from a century and a half ago. Probably the most amusing part was a display of actual letters written to Sherlock Holmes by people wanting help to locate a missing wallet and such (my favourite letter started “Dear Mr. Holmes, I am writing to you, which is stupid because I know you do not exist, but I have to because my teacher is making me…)

After this Beth and I walked to Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, which is a huge green space in the heart of London. Beth informed me that this was where in the past all the rich folks went to see and be seen. It is a lovely space and gave us a sense of breathing room after being in crowds so much of the time. We saw all kinds of birds by the (man-made) lake, including a swan with her fuzzy cygnets. After wandering around this huge park for a couple of hours who did we bump into but Chris and Rich from our Globus group! That was an amusing coincidence for all of us.

In Kensington Gardens we saw the statue of Peter Pan, put there in secret one night by J.M. Barrie, the author of the book. J.M. Barrie’s residence was right on the edge of the park, close to where he placed the statue. There were all kinds of things to see as we wandered around, but we just enjoyed having some time with no agenda. Eventually we walked back to the Hotel where who should we meet again but Chris and Rich! We all decided to go to a British Pub for Fish and Chips. I had a Pear Ale for the first time, which I thought was quite nice. Of all the people on our tour we got to know Chris and Rich the most, and have really enjoyed their friendship. He is a retired Science teacher, and she is a Speech Pathologist from Upper New York State. We had an enjoyable meal together then headed back to the hotel where we said farewell (again). Beth and I collected our luggage and made our way to the train station in order to catch the Caledonian Sleeper - an overnight train to Glasgow.

We got to the station quite early, and ended up having to wait over 3 hours before we could board. During that time I searched desperately for an internet connection so I could post for the Mysterium gathering back in Regina - I finally found one outside the station and the message was sent and I could relax.

We boarded the train shortly before midnight where we were shown to our berth, our really small berth - but our staying in European Hotel rooms helped prepare us for sleeping in small quarters. After the train departed Beth and I went up to the lounge car for a glass of wine, then quickly retired to bed - which after such a lot of exercise (over 24000 steps on Beth’s pedometer) we fell asleep quickly to the gentle rocking of the train.