The London Series #3 New Friends

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We like to travel on group tours and one of the reasons is that we always make new travel friends.  People who travel together have the advantage of shared interests and in many cases shared values.  Travelers also tend to be gregarious and conversational.
In our trip to London we became friends with Bob and Krista, a father and daughter travel teal from Pennsylvania.  Bob, at 86, was the most senior member of our small travel group and his daughter the youngest member of our group.  We met over dinner and the conversation flowed easily and we learned a lot about each other in a short time.
We talked about what we would like to do in our free time on the tour.  Having a traditional English High (Traditional) tea was on the top of our list and we found a French restaurant less than a block from our hotel that offered high tea daily.  Bob and Krista wanted to have the experience too and we made a foursome.
There are a lot of choices to make in a high tea.  You select finger sandwiches, scones and cakes and it’s served on a metal, Christmas tree shaped with three levels.  Sandwiches are on the bottom, scones in the middle and cakes on top.  We selected three types of sandwiches, two types of scones and two types of cake.  There were also at least 40 teas to choose from.
At tea we learned Bob had been in finance and still reads three newspapers a day, especially financial newspapers.  He is an active stock trader.  Krista worked in Pennsylvania state government in Harrisburg.  Bob lives in a senior community and still jogs two miles a day several times a week.  Krista had just rescued a Persian cat several weeks before trip and was worried about her.
Another evening Bob invited us to visit Piccadilly Circus in the evening because he wanted to see the area at night.  We agreed that if it rained we would go another night.  In the late afternoon it rained and after a long day walking and standing I took a nap before dinner, assuming that the visit to Piccadilly would be another night.  We noticed that Bob and Krista were not at dinner so we knew that Bob was living his dream, rain or no rain.
The next morning we had breakfast with Bob and Krista and their shared their adventure of visiting Piccadilly Circus at night and it lived up to what Bob expected.  A lot of people use the area to freely express their views of the world.  At breakfast Krista shared with us there was one sloppily dressed man shouting at the top of his lungs “What about the Irish!”  Of course we couldn’t decide if his comment was positive or negative but it was in the context of the liveliness of the Circus and gave the four of us a big laugh at breakfast.