Tuesday, April 23 – Harrow on the Hill

I’ll be remaining on Hill for the penultimate day of my winter escape.

First up is a lunchtime music performance by a Harrow School student at St. Mary’s Church.

It was a pleasure to be in attendance for Mr. Chan’s performance. He played beautifully, and rarely looked at his sheet music! The concert lasted 30 minutes, and there were about a dozen of us lucky enough to be in attendance.

This evening Mary, Tony and I walked around the corner to have dinner at The White Horse pub.

This was a fun! I was happy that Mary & Tony were able to join me for a night out before my stay on the Hill come to an end.

Wednesday, April 24 – Harrow on the Hill

I spent the day preparing for tomorrow’s departure – cleaning the flat, and packing up my stuff. Pretty exciting, I know!

But I’ll be ending my stay in London on a (very) high note! I’m heading back to The Royal Albert Hall tonight to see…

I’ve been looking forward to this ever since I booked it back in September. And once I bought this ticket, my departure window became very small, because I also wanted to do the Crazylegs walk in Madison this coming Saturday, the 27th.

So, how coincidental (fortunate) is it that the band is back in London during my stay? I’m lucky!

Since I have the poster from the ’10 show, it seemed logical that I should also buy tonight’s concert poster too, right?

Sidenote:

Sidenote No. 2: Coincidentally, just three days ago it was announced that The Dave Matthews Band will be a 2024 inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Congratulations. Well deserved! (There was a chant of Hall of Fame, Hall of Fame by the crowd during a break between songs)

I got back to the flat around 12:30am. A little late, but well worth it! A great finish to this year’s wonderful winter escape in London!

Thursday, April 25 – transit from London to Madison

After my late night, it’s fortunate that my flight didn’t depart today until 1pm. But since I had bags to check, I decided to get to Heathrow early, leaving the flat a little after 9am to catch the SL9. I’m loving this bus!

The United flight is on a 767 and I booked Economy Plus for the trip. The cost of the one way trip was $329 + 66k miles. Compare that to my one way business class fare when I traveled here from the States: $6 +80k miles. That’s the difference between London travel in early January versus late April. I’m telling you, winter is the time to visit!

The flight to Chicago was scheduled for a little over 9 hours, but we ended up landing at O’Hare around 45 minutes early ( a lesser than normal headwind?). My entertainment of choice during the flight was to binge watch the first few episodes of The Sopranos first season. A nice diversion (and thankfully unedited for airplane viewing; I wouldn’t have watched it if it was). Now I can’t get its theme song out of my mind (You woke up this morning…)!

I know I’ve talked in the past about the benefits of having Global Entry. Well, it was on full display today at O’Hare. There was a massive queue for the normal immigration stations, but I was all by myself at Global Entry. Beautiful! And my bags were there waiting for me when I exited immigration. Spectacular! All of this speed was rather dulled however by the fact that I had a four hour layover! Oh well…

Travel Note: My Global Entry was set to expire this past January. I applied for renewal last May though, and paid the fee at that time. However, for whatever reason, as of this writing, my application is still being processed. Thankfully, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has acknowledged this backlog and has therefore granted Global Entry access to those of us who have applied for renewal, paid the fee, and are awaiting a decision.

It was a beautiful day in Chicago, so I ended up spending much of my late afternoon layover time outside, in the area around the Hilton Hotel at the airport.

My flight landed in Madison around 9:30pm (3:30am in London), and from there I grabbed a Lyft to the house. (thanks for the airport pickup offer Kari; I would have felt guilty though, having you make that late night run)

Well! This was another amazing winter adventure! And quite the difference from the manic pace of last year, right? I really enjoyed having a base from which I could make short out-and-back excursions. Thank you Mary & Tony for providing me with that option.

And thanks to all of you for once again following along. It means a lot to me. And I really enjoy your feedback; whether it be by comments on this site, texts, emails, or conversations. You inspire me to keep this going!

I’ll be posting one more entry in the next couple days. It will include trip stats, lists, and some favorite photos. Guaranteed to bore you to death!