England -Our Luggage Came!

May 24

It was a rough night. Neither of us slept very well even though we were pretty tired. Jet lag feels like a bad hangover but without the headache.  

Mike had a light work day. The conference started in full swing the following day. However, he did work most of the day. That morning, Mike wore his new T-shirt again but we definitely needed to get him something to wear. He had a customer testimonial at 11:00am and should look less rumpled. I found an outdoor store within walking distance, which opened at 10:00am. Our hotel is on the East end of the London core. Historically, the East end was the poorer area but it’s been gentrified. The store was just beyond that, in an older area. I walked there and bought Mike an outfit. I was distracted by street sales on the way back and took a fun detour, exploring part of the city. As I got back to the hotel, with about 15 minutes before his meeting, Mike told me that our luggage had been found and delivered to the hotel. Within 5 minutes, we had our clothes again. Yeah! It was such a relief. We had been wondering how we were going to do the hiking part of our trip without our gear.  

Mike and I worked most of the afternoon-he at his conference and me in the hotel room. After work, we walked over the Tower Bridge. It’s a really spectacular bridge. We had bad beer (or “ale”) at one pub just on the other side of the bridge and more bad beer at a second pub where we had dinner.  England is living up to its reputation, but we enjoyed trying the different beers anyway.