Paris to Streatham, May 16, 17

 

We checked out of our hotel relatively early and walked to the Gare du Nord where we had our last coffee and French croissants.  We managed to get our bags to manageable weights and it was a bit easier than we thought it might be.
   Boarding the Eurostar is easy and efficient and we left on time around 11:15. We arrived at St. Pancras and then got a train to Gatwick, again all very easy and well marked.

  When we got to Gatwick things got a bit more difficult. First, it was not easy to figure out where to pick up the shuttle for the rented car and Mark had to call the company in Leeds twice. Eventually we found the right spot and took a van to the rental agency, Green Motion.
  There, things got worse. The company would not accept either of our credit cards because the numerals on our VISA cards are not raised high enough and are not on the front of the card. We had pre-paid most of the car, but they would not accept the card for the deposit.
  Finally, they accepted Barbara's Nantucket Bank debit card, but that meant that they wanted to charge us about 300 more pounds to make Mark the secondary driver. (Mark's Nantucket Bank debit card does not have raised numbers.) Mark got quite angry and called Indigo Car rentals which brokered our account to Green Motion. After several calls, we got them down to only 100 extra pounds. (Still nonsense, but we were not guaranteed to get a refund, so they had us over a barrel, even though our instinct was to leave and go back to Gatwick and either rent a car or take the train back in.)
  We are nervous about all this as our credit cards have all sorts of liability protection and the debit card doesn't. And then, when we were about to leave we were told that we do not have unlimited mileage. Fortunately, we computed that we should be able to do our traveling under the limit.
   From there we drove to Streatham to stay with Pete and Shirley. Mark made only one mistake almost turning into traffic by being on the wrong side of the road.  It took about an hour to get there.

    Pete and Shirley welcomed us with open arms and Pete made a huge salmon dinner complete with roasted potatoes and two salads. Sue came over with her dog, Beanie and Charlie was also home. It was a lovely evening with a lovely meal.
   The next day, the 17th, we took a bus and 2 tube rides to Finsbury Park to see a matinee of Building the Wall at the Park Theatre. Sue met us there. Written by Robert Schenkkan, the powerful play is about the consequences of Trump's promise to build a wall. In the play, he has declared martial law after a dirty bomb attack in NYC. Immigrants began to be rounded up.

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   The 2-person play was about a jailhouse meeting of a black historian and a white Trump supporter who had been in a for-profit prison that ended up killing immigrants in a "final solution." The actor playing the man in jail, Trevor White, was brilliant exhibiting  a wide range of emotions. The woman, Angela Griffin, was also brilliant. As Shirley said afterwards, it was real acting.

   It was sober, somber, thought-provoking and depressingly easy to see how it could happen.

    Later in the evening, we all met, including Charlie, at an Italian restaurant.
    A very nice day.