Visiting Sophie in London...

Last summer, Carlin and Kent set off to walk the Thames Path National Trail, a 184-mile (294-kilometer) trail from the Thames River’s source to where it reaches the sea. Due to timing, they were unable to complete the walk and saved the final 39 miles for early November, at which time we joined them. The first big decision we had to make was would we stay at a difference hotel each night, thus needing to carry all of our own gear, or make use of the Tube to get back and forth to the path. Since I knew I would be going onward to visit Veronica in Exeter, I was highly in favor of staying in just one hotel. We settled on the Hub by Premiere Inn at Tower Bridge, an affordable hotel with small but comfortable rooms in a convenient location. Jimmy and I took the ferry across to England, arriving the morning of Halloween. He had several meetings arranged, so I was on my own for the day.

I started out by taking the Tube to Marylebone Station. After taking a wrong turn, I came across the bronze Sherlock Holmes Statue made in 1999 by John Doubleday.

My destination was Regent’s Park...

...which is home to Regent’s University London, a private university in a beautiful setting where Ashlynn’s best friend Sophie was doing a foundation year in Fashion Marketing.

Luckily Sophie didn’t have any classes that morning so I was able to meet her for a tour of her school, which she compared to a boarding school because the dorms and classrooms were in the same buildings. Apparently only 15% of the 3,600 students are from the UK since it is twice as expensive as other UK universities, which tend to be public entities.

I bought a lady finger from the Halloween snacks booth and then we went to the café for a chat over hot chocolate.

Sophie’s room was quite large and really cute, although all I managed to capture in this shot was that she has a lot of clothes. When I visited she wasn’t too crazy about her classes, but really loved living in London. Later in the school year, her classes had improved and she had a fun group of friends, but her school year was unfortunately cut short in March due to coronavirus.