London Post II

It seems miracles have always happened in our family - ranging from Rodger living through a car accident to Annie making it home from Chicago for a wedding. Our London trip was no different. In fact, miracles began before we even left. Air India informed me that they had canceled their flight from London to Newark that Mary was to return on. They rebooked her on Virgin Atlantic. Mary didn't like her trip over on Air India, so it was a blessing to be on Virgin Atlantic AND originally Mary was scheduled to return 3 hours earlier than Jeanne and Emmy and now they returned at the exact same time! Mary really enjoyed her Virgin Atlantic flight and they all met each other at baggage claim! Back to London. Mary said she had class the day of our arrival until 11:30. By the time we got on the train, figured out the subway, dragged our luggage to our flat, got checked in and decided to walk over to the BYU center, here comes Mary around the corner and we have a big emotional reunion right on the sidewalk, on Bayswater, across the street from Kensington Park, on a beautiful day in London. It couldn't have been a more perfect reunion. Just another little miracle. Also, before we left we found a flat just doors down the street from Mary, literally around the corner. To boot, it was only 88 pounds a night and they gave us one night free. It was a miracle. Now sometimes, you have to accept miracles for what they are in your life and just know they are indeed miracles. Because, after spending many hours getting to London and functioning on essentially no sleep, there was a brief moment when we wondered just what kind of miracle this was.


The stairway was narrow, certainly nothing was fancy and the help at the desk was not exactly bending over backwards in the customer service arena.


Once inside it seemed a bit different than the internet pictures. Then I remembered the pictures I took of our house with a 10mm wide angle lens and how big everything can look. It was smaller than expected but had enough beds for the three of us, a table a shower and a small kitchen.


When I say "small kitchen" bear in mind that my lens zooms from 18mm-200mm and 18mm is pretty wide. These pictures are taken with a pretty wide lens giving the appearance of "bigger than life." But - once we got rested, and once committed that we could move to a hotel (for 4 times the price) if we couldn't endure, it really became our London home. We eased into a routine and the place returned to its "miracle" status. We could have "murmured" but I'm afraid if you reject miracles with murmuring, potentially bad things can happen and fortunately we never found out what those bad things could have been. We (ultimately) were just grateful for another miracle in our lives.