Usually, I like to put in a buffer day after the show before we go home, but that wasn’t possible this time. But I wasn’t pushed for time, although I did have a scheduled train ticket. I could (and did) leisurely get up, get cleaned up, go down for breakfast, come back up and pack.

So, here’s the deal. I’ve never been good at packing lightly, especially for a two-week trip where the weather could be scorching or frigid, even on the same day. So I had a lot of clothes with me, and both a big rolling suitcase and a rolling duffel, plus my backpack. I left behind as much stuff as I could, but still, I was like, ‘this is going to be a pain in the butt, isn’t it’. Also it was raining.

I took the lift down with my luggage and while at the reception window waiting to give my key back, who comes up but Ian P, always chatty. Sure enough, he tried to start the ‘wow, you have a lot of luggage’ conversation and I shut that down as much as I could. Dropped my key in the box rather than continue to wait, and headed out the door. Took a moment to get my bearings and some stranger came up the sidewalk. She looked at my luggage, looked at me, and said “Are you American?”. By this point, I was SO NOT IN THE MOOD and just shot back, “Why do you ask?” Offended, she replied, “nothing, just being friendly”. Mmm hmmm. You were being judgy, I know. “Enjoy the day”, I chirped, and dragged my gigantic luggage across the street to the Opera House, where the Portakabin was not open. (I’d needed to pick up my DVD of the show.) A quick social media post on FB for someone else to grab my DVD for me (thanks, Marisa!) and schlep schlep to the train station.

(I will say that since my luggage was rolling, it really wasn’t hard to maneuver except in tight train cars and in very hilly Buxton. But I was happy to finally make it to the train station.)

Plenty of time for the train, and while I was sitting and waiting, I studied another train on the far set of tracks, and realized that the doors were marked – every other door had icons of bicycles above them. Oh, that’s the doors I want to go in with my luggage, isn’t it. So a train came in and I went in the bicycle door and got settled and it was all great. And then they kicked us off the train and made us get on one that was coming in 15 minutes later – and I ended up having to drag my gigantic luggage basically to the entire other end of the platform to get on that one – but I did and got me and my luggage settled and it was all good, except for the train being late. I figured I’d probably miss my connection at Stockport, but we’d deal with that later.

We set off on the slow chug towards Manchester. At some point, a gentleman got on and put his suitcase by mine and sat by me on the little folding chairs. And a young mother got on with her baby and stroller and sat opposite us. Child was cute, but active, and at some point, the young mother gave him a recorder to honk on. (WTF?) The guy sitting beside me said to the mother, “Oh, your son is going to be a musician! I’m a musician too!” and I turned to him and said, “so am I, what do you do?”. and it turned out he’s a really famous organist! So we talked for the rest of the trip. He even knew and had worked with Jock Darling, the organist at Bruton Parish Church in Colonial Williamsburg. I told him I’d sang in that choir for a year and Jock and I gave a candlelight concert together (me on horn) the night before I graduated. So that was really fun and interesting.

What was not fun and interesting is they announced the train would not be stopping at Stockport! Apparently, this morning was rife with signal problems and such. OK, so… the trains to London Euston originate in Manchester, so I’d just go to the end of the line and get the next one of those. I went to the ticket office, showed the agent my ticket and he gave me some sort of accompanying ticket to get me on the next train, which was leaving in five minutes.

Well… because of the various kerfuffles, that train (which was an hour after the one I should have caught) was tremendously full and me with my giant luggages ended up once again in the doorwell with no seat. There were various announcements and they encouraged whoever wanted to to go to the premium cabin and upgrade for 30 pounds. (or, I guess, to first class for quite a bit more). The young lady sharing the doorwell with me and I decided that was a plan, so at Stockport (oh, look, finally here!), we went up to the three cars marked ‘first class’. Not obvious, but the middle one was really ‘premium’, not ‘first class’, and I got my luggages settled and sat at a little table opposite a dour-looking lady who I studiously avoided eye contact with.

So I sat there for most of the trip basically waiting for a conductor to show up so I could show him all my paperwork and pay for an upgrade. And we never got one! I suspect, on this train ride, they were all hiding, it was a real shitshow. But the result was that I was never charged for an upgrade – and later, I got an email offering me a refund for the ticket I’d actually bought because of the travel problems. Oh, that’s nice – so I’ve put in for that and it may be that I did that whole trip for free.

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Back at Euston Station, I’d decided to cab it to my new hotel. But they’re doing construction and they’d moved the cab ranks and I just followed other people with luggage and a block or so away realized I’d somehow completely missed the cab rank. But I was now by an easily-identifiable hotel and managed to summon an Uber to pick me up. It was a long ride – I’d picked my new hotel to be close to the air BnB my friends were staying at – and was booked at the Aragon House by Parson’s Green. Finally got there, schlepped my luggages in. They were sweet and friendly and announced that they’d put me on the top floor, three flights up, no lift. Arrgh. Luckily, a strapping young man took my suitcase up for me and then (after I got up two flights with the duffel and was like OMG at the third flight) came down and got the duffel and took it the rest of the way. The room was great – I really liked this hotel a lot and was kind of sad I didn’t stay there longer. I got cleaned up, went down to the bar and had a cider.

So, my buddies Susanna and Patrick from Rochester are lucky enough to do really long summer trips in Europe every couple of years, and we’d planned to meet up in London this particular weekend. They were already there, so I was texting them to figure out where to meet up. We were seeing Much Ado about Nothing at the Globe, and they were already in that general neighborhood, thinking about going to the Tate, and then to the Swan for dinner. I told them I’d meet them at the Swan, but then they ended up there far earlier than I thought they would, I still hadn’t left the hotel and I was about 12 tube stops away.

I set off to the Parsons Green stop on the District Line, got going and… sure enough with my train luck on this day… in about four stops, they announced they were going to reroute my train to a different endpoint, which didn’t help me. Got off on the very crowded platform and though, ‘well, I’m already running late, let’s just get a cab or an Uber’. Tried to do that for about 15 minutes – first time ever I think where I’ve summoned an Uber and no one accepted the ride. OK, then, back on the train. Off at Blackfriars’, across the bridge to the south side of the Thames. I was pretty sure from my memories of my last trip to London that I could just turn left and walk along the river to where I was going, but the Google maps told me it would be faster if I actually went inland a bit and did a circuitous route. Whatever, I did end up at the Swan and found my friends right away.

They’d been walking all day and sitting and drinking for a while. Patrick and Susanna were their usual perky selves, but their friends Kathy and Jim looked like they were in shock. They were beat beat beat. I got a cosmo and a caesar salad with chicken, and they got pretty much nothing and it took me a while to realize they’d already done all that eating and drinking before I showed up. But it was really great getting caught up, and how fun to be doing this in a completely different country – and this was everyone’s first time in London, too! (except mine) Later, crossing the bridge, I was sort of perkily singing, “we’re crossing the THAMES because we’re in LONDON!”. Susanna: “right?”

Off to the Globe. Susanna had gotten us actual seats, not standing room, and gone the extra mile and rented cushions too, which was very helpful. And we went up and sat. I’d never been before – the Globe is an as-accurate-as-possible recreation of Shakespeare’s theater, and I was delighted by how well it works as a theater space. I’d never seen Much Ado before, except for the movie (and it turned out that they hadn’t seen the movie, with Branagh and Thompson and all them, and I was like ‘get thee hence, it’s great!’), but didn’t have problems following it. Everyone was crystal-clear with projection and diction (except for Beatrice, which was annoying). It was well-staged, very funny (except when it wasn’t supposed to be), and very well-acted. There was a band of musicians (with modern instruments, including clarinet and accordion, but no matter) and there were songs and dances throughout.

So that was fantastic. Then a fun capper was that on the way out, I was talking to my friends about the cabaret stuff from the Festival, and a woman walking out beside us turned and said, “oh, were you just at the G&S festival?” and it turned out she was the Baroness from the Savoy Company Grand Duke! So that was a fun little moment.

Back to the bridge and across. One thing that takes a bit of time to get used to on the London Underground is the same line has trains that go different places – well, I guess that’s kind of true in NYC, but we don’t label them the same way. Anyway, we needed the Wimbledon train, and it came in soon enough. My stop was one before theirs, and there were good-nights. The Parson’s Green neighborhood was hopping for a late Friday night, and my hotel was no different, the pub was really active. (it was like 11:30 by this point) I bought a big bottle of fizzy water from the bar, because I was dehydrated AF, and went up to chill and go to bed.

So, mostly sucky day that ended great. Although I gathered from social media that the G&S Festival had had the awards ceremony and we’d gotten almost nothing. Grrrr. Looking forward to the adjudication report. I suspect that our concept, though worth trying, might have created a not-that-interesting show.