Emergency Passport

With the OK from my doctor, I went off to London today, even though I was tired and bruised from my day in the hospital yesterday. My sister was kind enough to stay the night with me and accompany me to the city. The main reason was urgent. My US passport was very close to expiring and it's always very tricky getting a new one when my job requires me to always be in possession of my US passport! It's easier to do in the US than outside, but being on sick leave for so long has prevented me from taking care of it there. Anyway, I won't bore you with all the details but the US Embassy agreed to issue me with an Emergency Passport which is valid for a year so I have now more time to get a full 10-year passport when I'm feeling better and I'm not looking at having to get rid of trips (and lose pay) while I wait for a new one now.

My sister mooched around the area while I was in the Embassy for about an hour and a half and then I joined her and we mooched some more! Mayfair is not an area of London I've really explored. We very much enjoyed some time in Mount Street Gardens, which used to be the burial grounds of St George's, Hanover Square. The statue is called 'Penny Panther' by Jane Morgan and is part of the Lancaster Collection. The Berlin Wall fragment was part of a plaque in front of a statue of Ronald Reagan outside of the Embassy. I was born in Berlin and my family lived there during the time the wall went up, so the wall always feels like part of my history. Although it happened just before I was born, I grew up hearing so many stories from my parents.

We hopped in a taxi and went to Neal's Yard near Covent Garden and had lunch at the Nordic Bakery which I'd been wanting to try. It's mostly Finnish food, with some overlap from other Nordic countries. Our family also spent quite a bit of time in Finland, and I was specially eager to try the little oval Karelian pie - a rye crusted savoury pie with rice filling and a spread made of chopped hard boiled egg and butter. My sister and I both remember these from our visits to Finland and I don't think I've had one since childhood! They were just as delicious as we remembered them! After some coffee and pastries to finish our lunch, we mooched around some more and then hopped in a taxi back to Paddington Station where we had time to find Paddington Bear! Of course! Another childhood memory!

It was a fun day out - not too tiring (taxi rides made it easier for me) and a great sister-outing! And of course, the most important - a good resolution to my passport issue which had been giving me a certain amount of stress recently!
See Extra Photo for some more scenes.