The England Journal: Friday 21 October

This ended up as a pretty good day. We got to the Loughborough train station at about 7:20 with Norman (forgot to get a picture with him and Brenda though; I’m really disappointed with that). Kinsey did pretty well on the train by falling asleep. It was really crowded for one stop up to Leicester, but then a bunch of people got off and all of us could sit down and put our luggage up.

We got into London about 9:45. At that point, four of the team got taxis to get all the luggage to the hotel, including the luggage from Michelle Irwin, the missionary who lived in Loughborough before returning the States. Michelle also apparently collected bricks and cement samples from how heavy the bags were. Kinsey and Sheryl were two of those on the taxis. The rest of us got on the Tube at King’s Cross (passing Platform 9 ¾) and got off at Bayswater. We took a slightly circuitous route to our hotel, Princes Square Kyriad. But once we got there, we saw that our luggage and our team were waiting for us.

We took a slight breather, then headed our again. Another member, Lara Beth, and I had to run back to the hotel and grab a couple of things and we ended up meeting the team at Buckingham Palace. We walked back up toward Trafalgar Square where the English government was preparing for the 200th anniversary of Lord Nelson’s death and they were doing some very cool stuff with the decorations around the square.

We went on up to Leicester Square, which is a place Sheryl and I didn’t get to see when we were here in 2000. We had lunch at Pizza Hut with Kinsey while the rest of the team went to a noodle bar. After that, we all Tubed over to the Tower of London, where Kinsey fell asleep, which was good since we had a late night planned. We all went ahead in anyway, since we were paying for it, but most of us didn’t stay long. Sheryl and I didn’t go to much of the things that we saw before, mainly due to Kinsey being in her stroller, but we did get to see the Crown Jewels again.

Sheryl, Kinsey, and I separated from the group at this point, since we were going to a different show than them (us to the Lion King; them to Les Miz). We took the Tube back to Trafalgar Square where we went to the Texas Embassy restaurant for supper (good old Tex-Mex). From there, we went up to the Lyceum theater to see the show.

It was spectacular. The way they did the animals was incredible with puppets and stilts and costumes. And best of all, Kinsey loved it. She watched every second and clapped at the end of every song and gave a standing ovation at the end. She was quiet while it was going one and just absolutely loved it.

After the show, we Tubed back to the Hotel and Sheryl and Kinsey went to sleep, while I went out to the lobby to wait on the rest of the group that went to see Les Miz. It’s 1:30am now and I’m giving up and going to be.

Saturday 22 October