So Yesterday

Was pretty AWESOME!!!!

It was also ridiculously long. I was up at 7am which would have been fine if I hadn't been blogging at 3am -oops! My dad and I took Charly to the airport so that her ICP adventure could begin and the traffic was brutal. Also, car parks at Heathrow are ridiculously over priced. Her check in was super quick so a big thumbs up for Delta. She'd checked in online and all she had to do was drop her bag off which came in at under 23 kg so happy days! Today her online status read: "just woken up on hilton head island!! YAY!! :D"

So it looks like she got there safe and sound. I can't wait to hear all about it.

After some hugs and goodbyes she went through security and we left the airport. So I guess by the time I got home I'd been driving for about 3 hours.

Now the plan was for me to get home, have some lunch and then head out to catch a train up to London about an hour later. So I made my lunch, sat down to eat it in front of Loose Women (UK equivalent of The View) and checked my Twitter Feed which was when things started getting complicated. South West Trains had posted that there was a signal failure on the line so I ate at super speed and then headed straight to the station where it became apparent that communication was going to be a major issue. The staff basically said to just get on a train and listen to all the announcements because anything could happen. The train pulled away (late!) and every so often it would just stop in the middle of nowhere for 30 mins. At one point the conductor said that if we stopped at a station they wouldn't be able to let us out because it would "cost them money" - how caring! :P
After 2 1/2 hours I finally got into London with about 30 minutes to spare before I was meeting Marie and Gina (2 awesome WDW Cast Members that are part of my Towers D-Fam). I headed straight to the new Disney Store in London and........

WOW!!!!!!!!!

The place is incredible. It's so much better than the old store and the CMs are far more like the ones at WDW. Admittedly they needed to smile and chat with guests a little more but on the whole they were great. There were special UK Vinylmations which I would have bought in an instant if I had had any spare cash lying around. One slightly odd thing is that the CMs had pin lanyards for trading. OK, well that's not really odd because we had them at WDW but what was odd was that there were no pins available for sale in the store. I'm a bit confused as to how guests are expected to trade if they can't buy any pins. hmmmmm.... If you get the chance then you should definitely check out the store. It's on Oxford Street near Bond Street tube station.

Ok.....so I met Marie and Gina and we wondered around the store and then walked to the London Eye to meet Vix after her shift had ended. Which all worked out really well time-wise. We went and bought tickets for Pygmalion then headed to Nandos after a rather indecisive 30 minutes. I think Vix is now an honorary member of the D-Fam! Very few people "get" the whole Disney thing when they haven't worked there or seen the parks for themselves and it is probably one of the hardest things about leaving because people look at you like you're completely insane. I'm lucky that my closest friends really seem to get it and I am so incredible grateful for that.

Pygmalion was fantastic. It's one of those plays that is incredibly British and remains relevant and funny. The cast were fabulous and I can now add Rupert Everett and Dame Diana Rigg to the list of greats that I have been privileged to watch performing live. Kara Tointon was also really good. I was a bit unsure of how she'd perform because her acting CV is somewhat limited, especially in terms of theatre, but it was obvious that she'd really studied the accents and had worked hard on it. Anyway, that's enough about theatre for the moment...

If I thought the journey into London was bad the journey home was arguably worse. I got to Waterloo and the train board was basically empty with the exception of 4 trains which were all delayed. There were no signs saying what to do to get where so I sprinted on a train that took me to a station on my line. The train was packed and it was obvious that no-one really knew what was going on. After a lot of waiting at stations and numerous phone calls home to keep my Dad updated on the situation I finally managed to get home but it seemed to take forever. I hope for the sake of commuters that the signal failure has been resolved otherwise they're in for a chaotic week.

Yesterday in a sentence: It was magically awesome! Although it was a bit weird saying goodbye to my friends 12 days before I'm actually getting on the plane but I suppose that's the annoying thing about your friends being everywhere except where you actually live!

Today's pre-ICP task: contact lens appointment - such fun!