London: Day 2

I think this particular day on vacation highlights a characteristic of vacation.  I literally have two photos I took that day, and one is of the map where I highlighted where my wife should meet me.  My wife and kid, on the other hand, probably have several hundred photos of park birds.

Aeryn didn't go with us to Hyde Park.  They managed to score tickets to No Rolls Barred, one of their favorite YouTube channels, to play Blood on the Clocktower with them at Kingswood Arts south of London. I recommend following the link - it's a pretty upscale place to board game [no board in this case, really, more of a social deduction game].  Given it was only our second day in London, I got up early to keep Aeryn company on the tube and train rides down to Dulwich [South London], and then hoofed it back up to Hyde Park to meet Jen.  I wasn't too worried about her because her stop was literally on the Jubilee Line from our Vrbo.

Jen and I spent a long time just wandering the park.  When I was there a third of a century ago, I hung out with a bunch of Finnish students in the sling chairs who had no idea I could understand about 50% of what they were saying [my college prof, Tuuli, told us we could understand Finnish at a kindergarten level].  We checked out the Diana Fountain, mostly looked at the outside of Kensington Palace, walked around the Diana pool with the sculpture of her with some kids, and checked out Albert's stuff.

As you can see, there were numerous corgis having a party at his statue.  Some of them were wearing little crowns or tiaras for the coronation.  What I will remember most about Hyde Park this time is that all of the park bathrooms were closed.  I had to seriously hoof it to get outside the park and buy a coffee to use a bathroom.  Londoners must have public restroom secrets, because you're putting yourself in danger if you enter a park early season without a dry bladder [and curse those beer joints in the park].

This is from Aeryn's adventure.  Sully.

And Adam.  Aeryn met a lot of other NRB folks as well including a fellow bassoon player.  When we were looking for the place after getting off the train, and getting lost on the wrong uphill from where we needed to be, we bumped into a Scottish college prof and her kid headed to the same event.  Aeryn made friends, which is a cool way to start the day in a foreign country.  There were a lot of folks playing and they rotated the cast between multiple games. Pretty cool to be able to make gaming your career. I hope it pays well, because service jobs in London based on what I saw pay for shit, and the rents and living cannot be cheap.

This is from the previous day, one I missed.  I'm in my Virgin Pulse jacket, with my Thomson Reuters umbrella, and potentially an Alteryx t-shirt under the jacket.  I should have found some underpants with the logo from Third District Nurses and most of my work life would have been represented.