First stop, London with Micah and Jonah!

The travel from Oakland to London was uneventful. We left on March 7th and arrived to Heathrow on March 8th. We took the train to Kings Cross/Pancras Station, walked 3 blocks to our hotel, Angus Hotel, and Mark lugged our huge suitcases up the two flights of stairs to our room. I found it to be a bit larger than the last time we were in London, but Mark claimed it was the same tiny size. We went out walking to find some food and ended up eating dinner at The Market Stalls right outside the train station. They are only open Wednesdays through Sundays. I had a delicious oat milk chai, an amazing caramel vanilla dessert, and dinner was a veggie tart for Mark accompanied by a loaf of seeded sourdough bread while I enjoyed a Moroccan wrap. We ate on a bench in the shopping area of the train station. It was a bit cold and rainy but we managed.

Photo of illustrated train map

What looks to me like a bird cage but is actually an art element near Kings Cross:

On Thursday, we walked to the Jewish Museum which was quite small but enjoyable. We shared the space with a couple of uniformed school groups who were quite boisterous, so much so that their teacher apologized for them. Favorite learning: Licoricia of Winchester of the early 12th century. Coincidentally, our friend Deb Hoffman Wade dressed up as her for Purim this year right after we learned about her! Another favorite moment: a wine/grape juice tasting! Fun fact: the Touro synagogue in Rhode Island is older than the UK's oldest synagogue in London. Though there was an even earlier one called The Great Synagogue that is no longer standing.

We visited the 9 3/4 platform at the Kings Cross station but didn't want to wait in line to take a photo.

For dinner we went to a Monopoly themed restaurant (which also features a bar and an escape room) which was better in theory than in practice. I did enjoy my fish 'n' chips with the malt vinegar though! I imagine the theming of the escape room is stronger than this:

Here are the photos we took on the Escape Room side:

On Friday, Micah and Jonah arrived! Hooray! I was so excited to get to spend this time with them in London and Paris. The three men walked around Kings Cross, had coffee, and a bad breakfast at an Italian place near our hotel. The four of us then walked a whole hour to the Tower of London and saw the Tower Bridge. There were many interesting parts of the Tower of London; it is a large museum now and there were LOTS of stairs and a lot of walking. We enjoyed a very English lunch at Byward Restaurant and Bar that Micah found for us. Because we had done so much walking already, we Ubered back to the hotel and everyone took a nap. 

    

For Shabbat services, Mark, Micah, and I (Jonah stayed back to rest) went to the oldest Sephardic synagogue in London called Bevis Marks. The men leading the service still wear top hats! A woman who sat next to me named Anna was attending her second service of her life. I tried to help her feel welcome and comfortable. And Laura Jones met us there! We tried to go out to dinner afterward near the synagogue but it didn't work out so just Laura and I ended up eating out together near our hotel. It was wonderful to reconnect but we forgot to take a picture except for this one of her with Micah and Mark that I grabbed while walking. :-( It was great to hear about her studies in theatre: stage management specifically, her boyfriend Nathan who is in the same program, and how much she loves living in London.

On Saturday, we enjoyed attending the Tottenham Hotspurs game. They won 3-1, Micah and Jonah both purchased scarves, and good time was had by all. Special moment: we were standing at a second floor window looking out and saw the opposing team getting dropped off and walking into the stadium. Then we saw the home team (Come On You Spurs!) bus pulling in and we thought we would see them too. Alas, the bus drove into the building so we didn't get to see our players before the game. 

Final Score!

 

Saturday night we met Liam Gordon at Kings Cross station! The 4 men went to a bar for pints, but I went home to bed. It was wonderful to see Liam, and Mark has the photos on his Facebook page. 

Sunday we went to Buckingham Palace for the pre-purchased tour. I highly recommend this! It was really interesting, and there were so many beautiful things to see and so much history to learn. Non-highlight: we didn't get to see the ballroom because it is being used as a practice coronation site. It is the largest indoor room in all of Europe! Before the tour, we scheduled our meeting with Betsy Weingarten, my college friend, and her friend Ingrid to watch the changing of the guard. But the changing of the guard ceremonies were canceled all day. It was wonderful to reconnect in person with Betsy. I had not seen her since the last Goucher reunion I attended a few years ago. Her friend Ingrid's son Markus goes to Northeastern University and is doing Tamid this summer in Tel Aviv! We took friend photos for Facebook; here are some outside of Buckingham Palace photos.

    

After the tour, we decided to go see Harrods. Just wow. Huge and not at all like a department store in the US. Long waits for the restrooms; that part was not too fun.

We got to see Justin Siberell and his son Ben at their apartment and they took us to the kosher restaurant Rubens. It was really delicious. It's always great to have good kosher meat out.

Monday we had an experience at SoHo house where we were hosted for lunch by congregant Andrew Gordon. It was amazing! That night, I went with Jonah to see the Back the the Future musical and Mark and Micah saw the Lehman Brothers play. We all enjoyed our shows and were happy with our choices! Seeing this musical made me want to watch all the Back to the Future movies again. Micah and Mark kept quoting the show for the rest of our trip.

Tuesday was our last day in London.  We jam packed it with two tours and a show. We took the Beatles tour (good, but not as good as the one Mark and I took last time we were in London), then we took a Jewish tour (excellent and some things we had already seen and learned), and then we saw Six! It was fantastic. Everyone liked it but some of us enjoyed it more than others of us.

There's so much more we wanted to do in London, we look forward to traveling there again sometime.