We slept until 6am, about 7 hours for me, a little more for Ash. Went up to the lounge for my regular coffee routine. Worked a bit over a bite to eat. Ash joined for coffee then went back to finish packing.

We left about 8am and took an Uber to the Cologne Bonn Airport. All went smoothly there.

We were on a Eurowings flight to London Gatwick. EW is the low cost regional in the EU, charging £3.90 for plain water even. We passed.

Everything went smoothly on the other end. We were waiting for our Uber. They ride was like 1 3/4 hours to our hotel – longer than our flight. Gatwick is farther out than Heathrow but that wasn’t our choice, our flight was rerouted.

We are staying at the Resident Soho. We just dropped our bags because our room wasn’t ready. It was not quite 2pm.

We just kind of meandered around at first. Soho is also the gay district and the theater district and the West End ish. Everything is right here.

Chinatown, too.

This is where Ash used to get haircuts when he lived here in the late 90s.

We made our way to Leicester Square. It was a strategic move. That building sign on the left there: Official London Theater Ticket Booth.

We had bought tickets for Lion King in the Uber on the way in. Ash used a benefit we get from Chase and they only cost £20 each. That will be Thursday night.

Here we scored big. The most we spent was £62.50 for one ticket. We will see:

• Oliver! – tomorrow matinee
• My Son’s a Queer – tomorrow night
• The Mousetrap – Thursday matinee
• The Lion King – Thursday night

We got great deals on all and we are done. No standing in rush lines or anything.

We came across some Lion King promotion going on.

We each spun the wheel but no luck.

We went by St Paul’s on our way to the Millennium Bridge to cross the Thames.

We walked around a bit more than realized we had run out of time. We were meeting friends for dinner and didn’t want to be late so ended up taking a taxi.

We met at a little Korean place.

We were so involved in conversation I completely forgot about photos of the food or the people! After dinner we all went to a meeting.

We took “the tube” back to the hotel after the meeting.

We had been worried about how small the room was going to be. London hotel rooms are notoriously small and it can be tricky for us since I tend to get up so much earlier (although not so much on this trip).

So we were Very Pleasantly surprised to pick up our keys and learned they had upgraded us for free. Mind you, we booked this hotel on Chase points so weren’t paying for it to begin with. Ash swears it’s because he gave the gal who checked us in a jar of gummy bears – that the Cologne Marriot had given us. Who’s to say? Kindness certainly doesn’t hurt.

This is the bedroom and originally probably all we were going to get.

There is a crazy long hallway that has a closet off of it, as well as the bathroom above and the toilet room below.

And then a nice living room with a little kitchen area. I’m currently sitting in that chair in the left corner.

So all that worrying about space for nothing. The upgrade fairy struck again. 

As you can tell from the schedule, we’re really just here for a couple of days of shows and then we leave on Friday morning. We’ll see what kind of trouble we can get into in the mornings. For now, I’m incredibly grateful that we have nothing to do tomorrow before 2 o’clock.