FRIDAY: First reunion, London
Trip Start
Jul 24, 2009
1
5
Trip End
Jul 28, 2009
London, England, United Kingdom
Friday, July 24, 2009
It all started as follows:
1) A couple of months back, I couldn't get the flights I wanted for Paris, so I decided to fly to London and take the TGV (Eurostar) to France instead
2) I realized that I had enough Marriott "frequent guest" points to stay three nights at the Renaissance Paris Vendome hotel, for free (regular rate: over 650 Euros a night...)
3) Through Facebook, I reconnected, about two months ago, with a few old friends from the year I spent working at Disney World, twenty years ago
4) Two of those friends live just north of London
5) One lives in Paris
6) Another one, found on Facebook the day before I flew out, also lives in Paris.
How do you spell "serendipity"? That's it, right?
After landing tired and with feet swollen by a 7 hour-flight in a window seat, I made my way from Heathrow to King's Cross-St. Pancras by tube. After coming up to street level, I took my bearings, and with little difficulty, found my hotel (booked through Expedia). I couldn't check in just yet, so I left my backpack in the luggage area, and sat in the lobby to wait for Christian and Adrian to arrive. They were taking the train from their hometown of Market Harboro to come spend the day with me in London. Christian and I had not seen each other since September 1989, and I had never met Adrian, who came into Christian's life fourteen years ago (and has since become the main force behind the "find Christian's old Disney friends" initiative).
Arrive they did! And - wow! How wonderful to see someone after twenty years like that! And it felt like I had also known Adrian for a long time, although we've only exchanged messages on Facebook for a couple of months. After the initial "shock" of re-uniting, we decided to get on with finding a spot where we could go and sit, and catch up on twenty years of life on different sides of the ocean.
We spent the day doing just that. First it was over coffee, then over lunch in Covent Garden (during which the proverbial London rain made an appearance and then exited stage left), and after a quick visit to Harrod's (fun but too crowded to enjoy shopping), over a couple of pints in Soho. Christian and Adrian were overly generous, spoiling me non-stop the whole day. Not only that, but since they had the funniest stories to tell, they had me in stitches pretty much the whole day.
The highlight for me was perhaps realizing that twenty years' separation can be bridged in a blink, especially as we've grown and matured and become who we are in that timeframe. Back in 1989, fresh out of high school, I moved away from home to live and work at Walt Disney World for a year, as a member of the World Showcase Fellowship Program. It was an absolute blast, but I was still in some ways a bit of an insecure teenager and I remember thinking that Christian, who had a wicked sense of humour and was such an extrovert (and I wasn't), was slightly intimidating! Well - fast forward twenty years, and I re-discovered a kind, funny, witty and genuine person with whom I spent a whole day gabbing, after he and Adrian took a day off to make a special trip to come see me in London. And Adrian? The nicest guy in the world...
We said good-bye in front of King's Cross station (and took a couple of quick pictures), as the guys hurried off to catch their train back home that evening.
Christian, Adrian - thank you both so much. I cannot wait to welcome you to Toronto and return the generosity.
After I left them, I started walking back to my hotel, reflecting on the day, and smiling to myself. I stopped for a meal at "King's Cross Tandoori" where I had the "Special for One" that delivered enough food for three. Got back to Hotel Arriva, checked in, got a room on the 2nd floor (with a nice window and a relatively decent view), and quickly fell asleep. Since my train for Paris was a 6:26am on Saturday, I didn't want to oversleep and miss it!
