Day 35: London and Stroud, England

We woke up, packed up, and checked out of the hostel. Our packs were heavy, but not too bad to carry. We walked to the LEGO store in Piccadilly to see the Big Ben made of LEGOs. Then, we continued on to Trafalgar Square. It was mostly blocked off, which was a bummer. 

From there we walked toward the RAF plane display in Horse Guard Parade. Unfortunately, they were in the middle of disassembling the planes. On the plus side, it was cool to see planes being disassembled for transport. We passed by Downing St, but it was heavily guarded so I am not sure if we saw #10. 

We walked through St. James Park, which had beautiful flowers in bloom. Then, we passed through Green Park toward Hyde Park Corner. At Hyde Park Corner we found the Royal Artillery Memorial. The statues from the Royal Artillery Memorial were important characters in one of our favorite book series, the Stone Heart trilogy by Charlie Fletcher. It was so great to see them. 

We took the underground to Paddington Station. At Paddington Station we retrieved our tickets for the train to our next destination. We had some time before the train and we were hungry so we got clearly-labeled vegan bento boxes from Wasabi Sushi in the train station. They took a really long time to post the platform for the train, so when they did there were lots of people rushing to the platform. Many people, including us, had reservations for coach J. Only there was no coach J, so right before the train left loads of passengers frantically boarded other cars and tried to find seats. We did eventually find seats and traveled uneventfully for about 1.5 hours to Stroud. 

My cousin, Jacob, met us at the train station. He had his adorable dog with him, Poppy. We last saw Jacob about 14 years ago in Florida. We walked to a local cafe owned by a friend of his and chatted and caught up. 

Jacob is the games teacher at the local Waldorf school, so a couple of hours later we accompanied him to the school for an event. He showed us around the school. It had a great gardening area, craft/woodworking area, and a really amazing gym. My cousin teaches in the gym and the large field area outside it. 

The event was a get together for all the kids that had just finished the equivalent of 10th grade and their families. There was a potluck, then a showing of pictures and videos from the 10-day hiking/backpacking trip the kids had just taken to Scotland. The trip pictures were amazing and the kids had the good fortune of excellent weather.

After the presentation one of the kids brought out their drone and took pictures of everyone. The boys were excited to talk drones with the kids.