Short Call Out

Catching up on the blog, last month was my reserve rotation.  The third Saturday of the month, I was sitting around on ready reserve.  It was just about 7pm and I figured I was safe for the evening.  Ladyfriend had come up and we had just taken salmon out of the oven when the phone rang.  It was Crew Scheduling with a short call out for London, leaving in about two hours.  After scarfing down my dinner, I got packed up and made my way to the airport.  I remembered that my friend Ann had sent me a message a few weeks before letting me know she was working over there for a few months.  I dropped her a quick email to see if she would be free the next day to hang out.  She was on-line so she responded right away and said she would be free to meet up.

Our flight over was uneventful.  We did have a little tense moment in the elevator at LHR.  Once we got to the ground floor the elevator jammed and we were stuck for about 10 minutes.  Then the power went out, but we were finally rescued.

We got to the hotel and I changed clothes and ran over to Waitrose and Boots for some provisions before meeting up with Ann.

It was a cloudy day, but still fine for walking, so we headed over to the London Eye, the big Ferris wheel attraction along the Thames.  It takes about 1 hour to go around, giving you great views of the city.

We made our way along the bank of river and headed down towards the Tate.  The street is draped with street performers.  Some of them scare me, like the people who paint their faces silver and then stand very still til you give them money.  We saw a particularly badly dressed Elvis who no one was paying attention to.  I put in 5p, which wasn't enough to get even a smile out of the guy, but then Ann gave him a couple of pounds and he gave us a great show, including karate kicks.  He sang my favorite Elvis song, Suspicious Minds.

Our next stop was a little pub I had been too this summer that served a great Strawberry beer.  We sat outside and threw back a few pints and caught up.  I had not seen Ann since shortly after graduating from high school.  She lived in my neighborhood back in Temple Terrace, FL and was a few years behind me in school.

We decided on pub food since Ann had still not had fish and chips, so we set out to find a cool place to eat.  We stopped around St. Paul's at sunset. The nearby pub was out of fish and chips (it's that even allowed!) so we ended up heading to a pub near where Ann was staying in Islington and had dinner.

Yet another great London layover and great catching up with an old friend!