Visiting with Friends

Monday was a bank holiday in England. The temperatures were 10°C below normal range - so
instead of being in the high 60s F they were under 50 F (10C) and the wind was constantly
tugging. And down into the 30s at night.   But the sun was out.

 SA, a Pakistani civil servant friend, who is in town for two weeks, met us at the hotel accompanied by a former student of his K, who also graduated from the same program as my son in Singapore.

We walked around Russell Square, sat on the bench for a bit, then decided it would be a lot warmer in the Penn Club where we were staying. We solved all the problems of the world over a couple of hours.

At three Gene Dugan picked us up

and gave us his special walking tour of London. Gene,m formerly of Anchorage, now has an Irish passport along with his US passport and is standing (not running) for election to the local council as a Green Party member. The elections are Thursday and I'll try to do a post on them as well. Gene is the second local council candidate we've met.

Our tour included the Greater Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) for children whose patron saint is Peter Pan. James Barrie left them the rights to Peter Pan when he died.
[UPDATE:  February 17, 2011 - GOSH emailed a new web address link which I've added.  It would be nice if others did that when they change the url.  GOSH, Thanks.]

Gene worked here for a while and showed us the gem of a chapel in the hospital.
Although they have chaplains of many denominations, the chapel is clearly oriented towards Christians. But it is beautiful.

We stopped into one of the many betting shops. I just wanted to see what was inside. There are also casinos here.

We did have to check out the Ethical Society.

Gene's tour included a few big name attractions as well as the quirky.  We saw the Tower of London

 Which had signs in more languages than I'd ever seen before.  But not Arabic which I thought strange.

(Double click to enlarge the photo)

 Then across the Tower Bridge to South London, where we saw some kids  taking advantage of some architectural features perfect for making leaps on their bikes.

Eventually, we made it to Gene and Jay's home, where Jay was waiting and we had a delightful
dinner and conversation that we were sorry to break off, but they had work and school in the

morning and we had a train to catch. We're on the train now as I type, but there's no wifi so I'm
not sure when I'll get to actually post this. There was sun out this morning, but it's grey now
again.

We're headed to visit with Doug who visited us in Anchorage in 2008. Doug and I first met in
Amsterdam when I was a student in Göttingen. We traveled a bit together the following summer
in UK and then I visited him again on my way back from Peace Corps Thailand when he was
teaching English in Uganda. Our reunion two years ago after almost 40 years went well and
we're looking forward to spending a few days with him exploring outside London.

 [It's Wednesday already.  I finally gave up on making the wifi work and so I'm doing this from Doug's computer.  Nice afternoon enjoying nature and small town England.  But the level of traffic is, for the roads, pretty high. More later.]