What an interesting day! After sleeping through Chloe's alarm, we awoke and ran down to breakfast before it ended. Quite honestly, this hotel breakfast seems fantastic from the outside, but at day 4 it is getting a little old. I like baked beans in general, but not for breakfast every day. Today I chose a classic piece of buttered toast with jam, a cup of tea, and a small bowl of pineapple. All very decent and nothing to complain about - truthfully I'm not sure what I would've wanted if I could've ordered anything at all! Maybe Eggs Benedict if I was feeling fancy? But can you really do that every day? I find breakfast to be very tricky - I am simultaneously indecisive and ambivalent. Please don't use me as a breakfast judge - unless you do a kick ass Huevos Rancheros. Then we can talk.

Today was drop off day for Chloe. The entire reason for this trip to London was Chloe's summer intensive ballet program at the Royal Ballet school at White Lodge (London). She was accepted to their summer program much to all of our surprise, and so here we are! We had to make our way from our central London hotel out to Richmond, and the trip went even better than we expected. We had to lug a heavy suitcase up three flights of stairs at one point, but aside from that, we managed to make it there exactly 7 minutes early. Impressive, if I do say so myself.

White Lodge was a hunting lodge built for George II and completed in 1730. It is situated on a massive plot of land - while we were driving out there we saw a herd of deer that had to be at least 100 strong! Crazy… I've never seen anything like it. According to Wikipedia the grounds were granted a royal charter and became the Royal Ballet school in 1956. It is a beautiful place, and I'm so happy that Chloe gets to have this experience. She is one of only 3 Canadians in her group… what an honour!

After dropping Chloe off, we were lucky enough to meet a lady from Norway who had previously called a taxi and invited us to share it with her. We also returned with the mom and sister of Chloe's roommate (shout out to Kara and Mollee!), and upon returning to the train station we made the (ill advised?) decision to grab a quick snack before heading back into London. I will save a lot of time and typing, and suffice it to say that it was an absolute gong show for this poor guy who was completely overwhelmed. One hour later, Julia and I ran to the train and missed it by 3 seconds. I'm not exaggerating, it was 3 seconds. We ran up to it as the doors closed!! Disappointing? Yep. Who misses a train by 3 seconds????

So, we waited 20 minutes for the next one, and it wouldn't have mattered except for the fact that we had tickets for a play tonight and needed to get back to our hotel room to change clothes and get the ticket info. We quite literally zoomed into our hotel room, did a Superman quick change, and headed right back out. By the time we got to the theatre we had exactly 27 minutes to grab dinner. I'm embarrassed to say this, but we had a hamburger from Five Guys. It was delicious. And fast!

The play (The Mousetrap), was delightful. It is in an old theatre and has been running continuously for 64 years! At the end you are sworn to secrecy as to who the killer is, and rightfully so. Julia and I really enjoyed it, plus our seats on the very top tier were excellent and we had our own little bathroom and snack bar. Superb. If you are in London and would like a fun excursion, this is it. Top notch!

Tomorrow Julia and I leave for Bologna, Italy. Change of culture, change of weather, change of food. We are excited.  :)