Our plane was due to leave late in the afternoon, so we figured we needed to be at Heathrow by 1pm. Which meant we wanted to be heading for the airport around noon.

Rather than waste the whole day at the airport, we decided to try and pack the morning as full as we could manage. We got up and packed our stuff up, then left it at the front desk while we headed down to the station for a trip to Harrod’s. Amazingly, we actually arrived before the shop was even open, so popped across the street to get ourselves something for breakfast.

Once it was open, we went inside and began to browse around. Of course, almost everything at Harrod’s is way out of our price range, but aside from the usual department store stuff, they have a large food emporium and a small bookstore. We spent a long time browsing around in the candy department, looking for souveniers for people and some snacks for ourselves. After picking up some interesting looking chocolates and a box of Turkish Delight (rose and lemon flavor), we escalatored ourselves up to the bookstore and looked around in there. The bookstore, unlike the candy selection, wasn’t anything special.

We left and walked back toward the hotel via the V&A Museum. There had been signs for an exhibit starting the day after we visited, and the advertisements were eyecatching enough that I was curious to see.

To make a long story short, it wasn’t really worth seeing. It was an interesting concept — that current fashion is constantly influenced by the past, and things we thought long gone continue to return in new forms. But the exhibit itself was not very illuminating and I felt it really let down the topic.

After that we quickly returned to the hotel and collected our stuff, then made our way out to Heathrow. Nothing of huge note happened there; we got through security in record time and were left with a lengthy wait for our plane. So we ended up spending a lot of money on food in the airport pub and on some more chocolate which we found in the next door sweet shop.

Our flight home was likewise unexciting: I watched two movies and otherwise just lounged around. After finding our luggage back at Logan, we came to the final leg of our journey — traversing the T back to Alewife to pick up our car. I was filled with trepidation lest our car had been towed after being in the parking garage for a week. But my fears were unfounded: it was still there awaiting our arrival, and we paid and left the garage without incident.

The adventures of the day before had been tiring, plus it was Sunday, so we slept in. We’d very little on the schedule for this day, though it ended up being nearly as jam packed as the rest of them.

A 10:30 departure for Victoria Station brought us to one of the entry points for the Bus Tour we’d chosen to take. The day was chilly and a bit grey, and I was soon to regret not having a hat.

We started off on the top of the bus (the whole tour was pre-recorded, and you plugged your earphones into the side of the bus next to your seat.) in the open air so as to be able to take pictures without the streaky windows obscuring the view. This was a wise choice in terms of picture taking, but with the bus driving briskly down the street and a cold wind, it was hell on my ears. They started to ache before we’d gotten more than a third through the tour.

Though we made our trip in February, I’ll say now that this was really the first time that I’d felt the weather was really hampering (or, in some cases, actually enhancing) our experience.

The tour was pretty good and enjoyable, but I was glad to get off of the bus and be able to try and warm up my ears. We got back on the Tube and headed to Oxford Circle, because our destination today was more stores! We went first to Hamley’s, which is a multy-story toy store, then walked down the street to Lush. We hit another Waterstone’s — this one 7 stories and probably the largest bookstore in London — and then hiked to Forbidden Planet, a large sf/f bookstore.

By then we were ravenous; we’d not had lunch, so we opted instead for an early dinner. We stopped at the Sherlock Holmes Pub and had a pretty decent meal (though I ended up with bangers and mash instead of the more healthy mushroom dish I had originally wanted — they were out.)

We passed on dessert and exited the pub. After consulting the street map, we decided SoHo wasn’t too far to walk (and it really wasn’t — London is pretty similar to Boston in that almost everything major is very close together) and hiked up there. Our destination: Yo! Sushi, a kaitenzushi place (ie, sushi on a conveyor belt). I had seen it mentioned in the guide book and knew we had to go there. Bob is a very big sushi fan.

I, however, am not, so while he chowed down on 6 or 8 dishes of the stuff, I nursed a plate of yakitori. But this was all right, because our next destination was. . . still more food! Yes, indeed. This was our last night in London, and there was still one more restaurant I had wanted to hit. This one was called Wagamama’s, and it was a noodle bar. It was in the same neighborhood as Yo! Sushi, so we walked over there and were quickly seated. We each ordered some soba noodles to eat. Mmm.

And then, completely stuffed, we went back to our hotel. The next day was to be only a half day, as our plane departed in the afternoon.

Saturday we were up early, because we were off to Hampton Court Palace, located not in London but a short distance away.

We headed down to Waterloo station to catch the train out to Hampton Court, and, after some confusion on our part and the part of the ticket agent, purchased a round trip for each of us. Not that this was necessary as it turned out, for at no point during our journey did anyone ever ask to look at our tickets!

The trip out there was not as smooth as it could have been: construction on the line meant we had to get off and take a bus after Tulworth, and this bus was exceedingly slow. Unlike the train, it could not barrel along through the countryside in a straight line, but had to follow all the various roads and stop for traffic. Plus it had to get to all the other intermediate train stations. V. irritating.

We did, however, eventually find ourselves at the palace. First on our agenda was to make our way through the garden maze. That accomplished, we plowed on into the palace, where, though the pamphlet mentioned tours, we were unable to determine exactly where those started. Before we could ask someone, we spotted what looked like a tour, so sort of stood there for a bit and listened to the woman talking about the area where we were. As the group started off, we went to follow, and then got yelled at! Apparently it was a private tour, but how were we to know?

Left to our own devices, we still did a pretty good job looking around. The Palace is divided into several groups of rooms, and you can follow a path through them and see everything in that group. The rooms are fitted out as they would have been at various times, and it’s really a worthwhile thing to see. One of the things that Hampton Court has that most do not is intact kitchens from the pre-Elizabethan era. Typically the kitchens were not really part of the palace but structures outside of it, and often caught on fire or were destroyed to be upgraded when technology advanced.

We had just one more problem at Hampton Court before we left, and that was that we were completely unable to locate the entrance to the group of rooms called ‘Queen’s State Apartments’. We even asked one of the people who worked there, and her directions were not at all helpful, as they did not match the map and there was nothing there when we went to where she said.

Our feet were starting to complain again, though, and as it was lunchtime and we’d still the train ride back to London, we decided to give up on that bit and head back.

Once in London again, our intention was to visit St. Paul’s cathedral. As we went down to catch our subway train, we found that it was very crowded. When the train arrived, I shoved my way in and Bob, who is always more reluctant to push and shove due to his size (people might take it the wrong way, I guess), did not. I turned to see the doors closing with him still on the platform. I was so surprised, I didn’t communicate clearly what he ought to do.

At the next station, I got off and waited for the next train, which I scoured to see if I could spot him inside. I did not. So when the next train after that arrived, I got on and continued to Embankment, where we had to switch lines. Bob was not there. I waited for a little while, then decided I must have missed him (since he knew we were going to St. Paul’s, there was no reason he couldn’t have met me there), and continued on to our destination stop. I looked around in the station a bit, then, after not finding him, left and went to wait at the cathedral.

To me, this was the most obvious thing to do. We are both adults and we both knew where we were going. It’s not easy to find someone in a subway station, because there are lots of escalators and levels and exits and entrances where they could be. Outside the cathedral, there was really just one path from the Tube station and pretty much everyone was going to end up at the front steps eventually.

So I took up station at St. Paul’s and waited.

And waited.

After an hour I decided I was hungry and went in to the cafe and got a sandwich.

Then I waited some more.

After an hour and a half I decided I was going to continue on with our destinations for the day, even if he had wandered off somewhere. We both knew where the hotel was, and could get back to it if need be by ourselves.

And as I came back to the St. Paul’s station, seething, who should I discover there but Bob, travelling up the escalator!!!

Apparently he had spent the last hour and a half looking for me in various Tube stations.

I was angry, even though it wasn’t completely his fault, and we decided not to go back to St. Paul’s but to give it a skip.

The rest of the afternoon had been blocked out for book hunting, and Bob soon redeemed himself by helping me to find books that I was looking for. Plus, bookstores always cheer me up. We hit Foyle’s first, and after being unsuccessful at finding any of the books on my list there, headed across to Border’s (I know, Border’s) where I picked up a few things. After that was Blackwell’s, and continued walking soon brought us back to Leicester Square.

We’d spotted a restaurant called “Spaghetti House” while touring around waiting for the Mousetrap to start, and being an ardent fan of spaghetti, I had a strong urge to try the place out. Since we happened to be there and it happened to be dinner, I took it as a sign and we went in. We were lucky and found ourselves seated quickly: the place was small and people who came in subsequent to us or were in larger parties were told that the wait could be an hour or more. The meal was excellent.

After eating we headed back to the hotel to hang out for a while. This was almost a mistake, for we’d planned to go to Tesco and get some more food, but it was almost too much effort to get moving again.

Move we did, though, and we picked up some snacks and some more water. Then we hit the internet cafe a second time and returned to the hotel in time to watch more UK Apprentice.

Because our night before had been somewhat early and not very exhausting, we somehow managed to be up early and at the Tube station a full 5 minutes before we could get the off-peak passes. Once that was acquired, we headed off to the Tower of London, one of three destinations we had on our docket for Friday.

At the Tower we acquired tickets, paused to look at the church where John Quincy Adams was married, and then headed inside with the Beefeater tour. Somehow it struck me as shorter than I remembered it from 10 years ago, but I can’t quite put my finger on why or what was missing. In any case, as it turned out, I apparently remember very little from my first visit, because the grounds and most of the rooms seemed completely new to me.

We wandered around in the various sections of the Tower, saw the Crown Jewels and the suits of armor and the weapons and the various interesting rooms and informational plaques. At some point I managed to lose Bob, and had to wait for him to reappear. The models of the Kings’ horses and the wooden heads of kings were among the last things in the White Tower that we saw, and thus are one of the things I now recall best.

And then it was time for a bathroom break, which I would not normally mention except that this was really the most poorly designed W.C. I went into during the whole trip. The thing was long and skinny and it was extremely difficult to get in and out, plus the stalls were really hard to maneuver in. So ladies, take a restroom break before the Tower of London, or hold it.

After a quick pause in the Tower’s cafe for a meal (mmm, potato and leek soup), we trudged off to the British Library to look around. It was starting to get fairly late in the day by this point, as we spent quite a long time at the Tower (as it deserved.) So I was a bit concerned that the Library would close while we were still trying to look at things. As it was, I needn’t have worried: we did have plenty of time, just not an abundance.

The Tube stop for the Library is King’s Cross, which naturally piqued my interest. We came up into the train station on our way out, as that’s the ground level, and we looked around at the various platforms. But neither platform 9 nor 10 was visible anywhere, so we just took some pictures of the other signs and went to find the library. As we were walking there, I noticed a sign pointing to 9 and 10 — they were around the back, currently hard to reach due to massive construction that was going on in the area. I made a mental note of it, but we didn’t stop right then to investigate.

The library was well worth the trip. Though we didn’t have a chance to look at one of the things I wanted to look at (some old newspapers articles written by Dorothy Sayers), we did spend a solid chunk of time touring around their displayed literary treasures. Among the very cool things were:

• An actual recording of Florence Nightengale’s voice that you could listen to
• Jane Austen’s childhood/teenage notebooks, with her funny parody stories
• A big display of Beatles’ stuff, including a number of rough drafts of their songs, one of which was on the back of a greeting card
• The Magna Carta
• A freaking ton of Bibles of various provenance

By this point and even during looking at the library stuff, both Bob and I were suffering from severe dead feet. Walking for days was starting to catch up to us, and it was painful (though necessary) to continue.

After a stop at the Library’s gift shop (where I narrowly narrowly stopped myself from spending several hundred dollars on books), we shuffled back to King’s Cross. In spite of our aching feet, I was determined to see what there was to be seen at Platforms 9 and 10 of the station, so we went back there. And lo, there is an actual brick wall between the two platforms, though due to Harry Potter’s popularity, that wall has been marked clearly Platform 9 3/4ths and there’s even a luggage cart stuck as if it’s halfway through the wall.

We next made our way to the British Museum, parts of which were to be open late — until 8pm. The walk wasn’t long after coming out from the underground, but it felt that way to our feet. We collapsed at a table just inside of the door and sat there for a while, drinking from bottles of water and hoping that our feet would recover enough to keep moving.

After a while, we decided to try and do a little exploring, so we went through a number of the rooms that were still open. The Rosetta Stone is a must see, of course, and we stopped to look at that (and get a picture). And then on to the Parthenon sculptures and freizes. Accompanying the latter was a short documentary on constant replay, explaining how these things had come to England and trying very hard to defend what had happened without actually flat out saying ‘it was for Greece’s own good that we took the stuff, and we’re not sorry, ha ha!’

We sat and recovered a bit more, but then we went and walked up and down the Nimrud display. Why? Because, as I mentioned yesterday, I am a huge Agatha Christie fan and she and her husband (Sir Max Mallowan) were involved in the dig at that location. She might have helped clean up some of the very stuff that was on display!

And then we left, unable to stand the thought of walking any more in a fashion that wasn’t taking us toward the hotel or another place wher we could collapse for a significant amount of time. As we headed back to the Tube station, we passed an interesting looking Chinese restaurant, and so stopped there for dinner. Full of duck potstickers, dumplings and pineapple rice, we managed to get back to the hotel and off of our feet for SLEEP.

On Thursday we overslept a bit and woke to find the weather grey and spitting. But there wasn’t much of anything we could do about that, and though it was chilly, we both knew that it was quite warm compared to home.

This day we planned to do the Westminster area of London, along with the London Eye, just across the river from there. Accordingly, we headed off to Earl’s Court to purchase ourselves some Tube passes. As it turns out, overlseeping was a boon here, because to get an off-peak price for the pass, one had to wait until after rush hour was over anyway. So we were able to immediately set off. After arriving near Parliament and finding there to be a long line of people waiting for admittance, we decided to do the Eye first.

After hiking across the bridge, we bought our tickets and, due to the time of year and the grey day, were able to board almost immediately for our slow spin around. The weather meant that the view was not as good as it could have been, and did make it difficult to take pictures from our pod — the camera kept wanting to focus in on the raindrops on the outside of the glass — but the view was still spectacular. You could see up and down the river and get an almost helicopter view of much of London. Definitely a must see.

After landing we headed back toward the Parliament buildings, pursued by a strange waffle smell whose origin we couldn’t pinpoint. The line was still long, but there wasn’t much we could do about it, so we got into it. Eventually we got to go through the security checkpoint and were permitted inside. We went up to the gallery in the House of Commons and sat down to listen to the debate for a while.

Why aren’t our politicians this snarky and amusing?! If they were, we wouldn’t need the Daily Show, and everyone would watch C-SPAN instead of Comedy Central. The debate, which during the half hour or so we sat there, covered a variety of topics from daycare to a controversial intelligence bill, was extremely entertaining. I could have sat there for most of the rest of the day, just listening.

I jotted down (you weren’t technically supposed to take notes, and they did in fact relieve us of our bags and cameras before entering the gallery) after the fact a very short exchange:

MP: *talks about how the council in her area is dominated by the Conservative party, then later starts to talk about how daycare costs have been rising*
Speaker: This is what happens when Tories get in power.

Unfortunately, we had other things to hit that day, so after a half hour or so we left the House of Commons and cut across to the House of Lords. They were a bit more dull, though that probably had a good deal to do with the fact that the topic of the day was not important and thus hardly any of them were present.

After a few minutes listening to the Lords, we exited Parliament and headed across the street to Westminster Abbey. The small church there (not attached to the main Abbey) was being used for a funeral that day (while we were standing in line outside the Parliament buildings, we saw numerous well dressed mourners arriving and going inside) so we didn’t go in. We toured around in the Abbey itself for quite a while, looking at all of the tombs and memorial plaques. You’re not supposed to take pictures in there, though, of course, many people do anyway.

They had a stoncarver in there in the process of adding some names to the tile floor, so that whole area was fenced off. There was also a camera crew which I believe was filming some sort of travel documentory or tour thing.

After we got done with Westminster Abbey, it was time for lunch. Unfortunately, we chose to walk up Whitehall to look for some place to eat, and that was not very useful. Long on government buildings, short on food. But we went past Downing Street and the horse guards, so it wasn’t a completely wasted walk.

At the end we hit Trafalgar square, where the Olympic committee had set up a very large plastic tent (the IOC were touring London while we were there to evaluate it.) There we found a few places to eat, and in the interests of time and money, we selected a pizza buffet. (Not great, not horrid, on the level of a Pizza Hut.)

After lunch we hit the Waterstone’s in the square so I could take my first stab at finding the list of books I wanted and the list of books that J wanted. J had more luck than I at this store (a big zero for me.) Once done with browsing the bookstore, we got back in the Tube and headed back to the hotel to change: we had tickets for the Mousetrap that night.

We weren’t certain how long it would take us to find St. Martin’s theatre once we got to Leicester Square, so we gave ourselves plenty of time. Plenty, plenty of time. We ended up going up and down Charing Cross Rd for about an hour, hitting every used bookstore we came across. Still no luck on my list, though it was fun anyway.

The Mousetrap itself was quite good. The play has done a remarkable job of not dating itself, though I think it may be starting to get to the point where some of the isolation is a little unbelieveable. I also found myself confused by some of the characters’ ages (confusion which was not cleared up, I must say, by reading through the script of the play after I got home.) Timeline issues drive me nuts! I definitely would have felt like we had missed something had we not gone to see it, being the huge Agatha Christie fan that I am, so I am pleased.

After the play it was pretty late, so we headed back to Earl’s Court. It was not, however, so late that we wanted to go to sleep right away, so we stopped at one of the internet cafes and caught up with people. I also wanted to make sure that J was okay with the price of all the books I had managed to collect, and if I should stop going through the list.

We left the cafe when our time was up and stopped at a fast food-y kebab place and picked up a snack of curry and chicken and other goodies to take back with us to our hotel. Then we pigged out while we watched some mindless television.

After going to sleep so early the night before, we woke up without too much difficulty on Wednesday. The day was nice, and in the sunlight, the area proved much simpler to navigate than it had seemed the night before.

After looking at the map, we decided to walk down to the Victoria and Albert museum, which was just down the road. The V&A is located right near the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum, and our plan for the day was to just hit all three and take it easy.

And that’s pretty much just what we did. The walk was a little longer in fact than it had appeared on paper, but as it was only the first day of our trip, our feet were up to the challenge. It helped that the walk was also broken up by a stop in a small cafe to have breakfast. (Accompanied by a can of German Coke Light for me.) Along the way we also passed numerous internet cafes, but only took note of their location and prices rather than going in just yet.

We hit the Natural History Museum first and wandered around a bit. I have a note here that says “sex”, and I recall that we spent a good portion of our time in the museum going through the portion relating to human reproduction (us and probably 90% of the school children who were there on a field trip), but though I assume something amusing occurred, I no longer remember exactly what. Some of the displays were decidedly unattractive.

After we decided to give the Science Museum a miss (we’re both science geeks, but the Boston Museum of Science is pretty good, and it seemed unlikely there’d be anything too special there), we headed in to the V&A. The first thing that struck us was the chandelier in the atrium, a monstrosity of blue and green glass sculpture that looked decidedly out of place in the non-modern architecture and design of the building. (There’s a very similar chandelier at the Bushnell Auditorium in Hartford, CT.)

The V&A was undergoing a fairly extensive renovation, so some of the collection wasn’t available to be seen. However, a lot of it was out. There were a number of really interesting displays, including several rooms they’d attempted to restore to their original decorating schemes, including the windows, window treatments and wallpaper. The part I found most interesting aside from the furnishings was the clothing. A large display of period costume for both males and females was extremely intriguing, and in the center of that room was displayed a large number of clothing items from the wardrobe of Queen Maud of Norway, who was Queen Elizabeth’s great great aunt. (I think. Victoria’s granddaughter.)

By this time we wanted another quick break, so we went into the gift shop and purchased a pile of postcards. Then we found the museum cafe and sat down with something to drink and wrote them all out, so we could send them off and maybe not beat them home. The postcards written, we decided to walk back to the hotel at a leisurely pace, with the agreement that if we saw any interesting restaurants on the way, we would stop and have dinner. As we came out of the museum, it was snowing — a really light snow, not even quite a flurry.

Though we passed several restaurants, none intrigued us enough to go in. But what we did find was a Post Office. Stamps were purchased and the postcards mailed out, putting us ahead of the game for once. We got all the way back to the Earl’s Court area before we found a high concentration of restaurants to choose from. Our first selection of pub proved to be too smokey inside to endure for long, so after an abortive attempt to find a seat where the smoke wasn’t annoying, we abandoned ship and went up the street to another pub. This one was much better and had some interesting stuff on the menu. I ended up with a salad and some Welsh rarebit, and Bob and I shared some spring rolls with a really wonderful sweet chili sauce.

Then we went back to the hotel (so close and so easy to find… we couldn’t imagine how we got lost the night before.) After flopping around for a bit we left again, trotting down the street to the Tesco supermarket to get some things for breakfast and some bottled water to carry around with us.

After grocery shopping it was back once more to our room, where it turned out Apprentice was showing on the TV. But not the Trump version — the Apprentice UK, with Sir Alan Sugar in the role of Trump. It made a refreshing change to not have the Donald prancing around, and I actually found his reasons for firing the person he did to be sensible and well thought out. I was amazed. (You can probably find this show on BitTorrent if you look. I recommend.)

Then, to sleep.

Our flight was early. So early, in fact, that unless we’d been tired enough (and, let’s face it, prepared enough) to go to bed at 8 or 9pm the evening before, sleeping was just not worthwhile. So we didn’t.

I left many things to the last minute, as usual, not all of which were related to the trip. The most stupid of which was getting together my materials to send to the state to be authorized to pursue Alternative 4 teacher certification (which is: in areas where a critical shortage of teachers has been noted, people with no certification can start teaching right away as long as they are deemed qualified by reason of their college courseload.) This was not a difficult form to fill out, it just required me to locate a large envelope in which to mail things, and to gather up my college transcripts to send along as well.

However, at about 2am I found that the transcript needed to be unopened, and I didn’t have one from Wellesley that was so. So I stuffed another envelope, this one to Wellesley, requesting the transcript to be sent directly to the state. And after running up and down the stairs in search of large manila envelopes, I couldn’t find any. (Note: I found them in about 5 minutes after we got home. Argh.) By the time we needed to leave, I still had not managed to locate something in which to send the form, so I threw it all into my bag, intending to purchase an envelope at the airport and mail everything from there. I knew the form would take a week or two to process, and I was hoping to get it out before I left the country for a week.

We departed the house around 4:50, not too much later than the original plan. A stop for gas also provided an unexpected chance to buy some Krispy Kreme donuts (for those not from the northeast, there are a grand total of 3 official Krispy Kreme stores within 50 miles and none closer than 30). They weren’t fresh, but at 5am, one is not picky that way.

We parked at Alewife and managed to make our way to the airport without incident. Our luggage was checked in and here I made an unexpected mistake. Assuming that there would be a shop selling envelopes and a mailbox in the terminal, I decided to wait until after we’d gone through security to deal with the mail I still had stuffed in my bag. Ha.

After a lengthy process, we were past the checkpoint and I soon discovered just how wrong I was. None of the stores had any envelopes or office supplies available at all. And to make matters worse, I was told that the only mailbox was in the non-secured area! I approached the agent at our gate, who was evasive. The airlines weren’t supposed to take mail from passengers, he claimed, but he might be able to do it if I came back in 10 or 15 minutes. Puzzled, but sure that I didn’t have enough time to leave the gate area and make my way back through security, I returned to my seat. After a while the man left the counter and I went back to talk to the woman there. She took my envelope without a word.

I decided that since the Wellesley request would take several days, I would wait until we got back to mail the actual form to the state. Not as if I had any choice — I wasn’t about to mail it back from the UK.

Our plane was late in arriving at the gate, and was very slow to take off. But international flights are a world of difference from the slummy in-US types we usually take: the plane was very large, so our seats had plenty of leg room, individual screens, and felt bigger than your average cramped DC-10. Thus the delay was not too awful to bear.

The flight was uneventful, save for a poor little kid whose ears were obviously killing him as we took off and landed. I felt so bad for him, but also very grateful that I finally grew out of that problem! (Plane flights when I was little were a real nightmare.)

After landing at Heathrow, we went through customs, which took a while. And then it was time to find the Tube. Since we were staying in London and not planning on going anywhere outside of the city, we’d elected not to rent a car and thus have to deal with the nightmare of trying to park it. But this meant we needed to use public transportation for everything (or hire a cab — yeah right. This isn’t Amazing Race.) Finding the Tube was complicated by the fact that the station at our terminal was closed for construction. We were told we had to take a bus to the other terminal and get on the subway there, but we found that we were also allowed to take the Express Train for free between the terminals, as long as we didn’t stay on it to go in to London itself. So that’s what we did.

By the time we arrived at Earl’s Court station it was quite dark, and it was starting to get late as well. Nearly 8 or 9pm. We were exhausted and hauling a large amount of luggage, and found ourselves a bit disoriented as we exited the station and started attempting to locate the road the hotel was on. We wandered in the wrong direction for some time before circling back and re-checking the street map in the station. Our second effort was more successful and we found the hotel and checked in.

Or at least we tried. The man at the desk first suggested that we wanted a room on the basement floor, because they were larger. However, when he took us down there, the room was already occupied! A bit concerned now by the apparent disorganization of the hotel staff, we all went back to the front desk to get the key to a different room. This one was free, and we went inside to collapse with our stuff. The room was very small, in square footage probably about the same size as J’s room, but with part of that partitioned off to make a bathroom. But it was more or less clean so there we weren’t going to complain.

We watched television for a bit (TNG was on) and then fell asleep. We wanted to get up early the next day to get started on sightseeing.

The past couple of weeks, mom and I have been working on J2’s financial aid papers. Last Saturday, I went to her house to finish up the last of them. I thought this would be a simple thing, but then mom called in the morning to alert me to a possible snag: J1 was staying at her house!

According to a glum IM from J2 “He’s here all the time now, I don’t know why.” I’m puzzled about it myself — he’s doing work in Milford, which is a town near where I live, but not all that much closer to mom’s house than his own apartment (with the highways the actual physical distance is secondary to how long it actually takes to drive there.) Apparently he’s doing lots of work there; no one can figure out why he’s not staying in a motel, because surely that would be about as economical as having him drive nearly three hours round trip every day.

In any case, he was at work on Saturday, so I managed to come over, do the papers and depart again without running into him.

Tuesday was mom’s birthday, so I came back over to her house. This was more tricky, since she doesn’t get home ’til 7:20 and J1 was due to return… whenever. But all went well. We had some pizza and some cake and I fixed mom up with Firefox instead of her old Mozilla, and then I left shortly after J1 got home.