It is Thursday during the day and I am spending most of the afternoon in my office because I still have lots of email, voice mail, and snail to “catch up on”.
I have interviews of those who are preparing for First Communion as well; and so I decided I’d start this “update” for Paddy of the weekend in London and the trip home. I will write something else this evening about yesterday and today and that should bring us up to date!
On Friday, April 27th, we left the ship in Southampton at around 8:45am and we went through customs very easily and headed outside. There was our motor coach waiting to take us to London. It was about a two hour ride but I enjoyed just seeing the very lush fields and the quaint towns and villages. We were let off at Victoria Station and although we had a hard time finding a taxi, we finally got to our hotel. It was the Millennium Hotel, Knightsbridge. A group of us stayed there almost 10 years ago when we had a cruise to the fjords of Scandinavia that began and ended in London. Because we’d been there, we had a sense of the neighborhood. We went to a Fish and Chips place we had been to before and it was soooo good. We went to Harrods’s and did not shop!! We took the tube (the underground) to Piccadilly Circus and saw a show called “Ghost”. It was a musical of the movie with Whoopi Goldberg. The technical parts were tremendous.
Saturday, Pat went to the Victoria and Albert Museum. I went for a short walk, bought some English newspapers and stayed around the room. It began to rain on April 1st and it had rained for 30 days. People were thinking of building arks. That night we went to a Italian restaurant, which we had gone to before. The food was still great!
Sunday, Pat went shopping and then we went to Evensong at Westminster Cathedral. They have a choir school there and it was beautiful (all in Latin; but still beautiful). Then there was an organ recital and then Mass. Afterwards, we walked around Westminster and had supper – Great spaghetti carbonara! We went to bed early as we had a 4am wake up call. We got a taxi to Paddington Station, where we got the Heathrow Express, a train that took us to the airport in 15 minutes. Our flight was United 929 that left at 7:25am. We flew for 8 hours (through some very rough weather) and arrived at O’Hare in Chicago at 10:15am. Pat took a train into the city and I took a cab to Midway airport, where I caught a Southwest Airline’s flight to Baltimore.
God love him, Patrick Mullan was at the baggage claim and brought me home. The pastor was at the door and welcomed me with a hug. I was very happy to be home. It was around 7:15pm and I went to my room, got ready for bed, and was asleep before Jeopardy began. I woke up around midnight, got a glass of water, and went back to sleep.
I woke up Tuesday very refreshed. Came to the center and got back to work.
I am going to leave the office now and get supper, then I will report on Wednesday and the rest of Thursday from the rectory.