Abbey Road was about 2 miles north of the hotel - but traffic was bad that we did our Beatles pose here. Just pathetic. It reminds me more of Jackie Gleason of The Honeymooners - and away we go.
Jan and Dick Davis live in Maricopa County ARIZONA - but travel the world in their business. I took this picture from the steps of O'Neill's pub where we drank and laughed all night. In the summer - the London sun stays up until 10 PM. After our party - they had a very short stumble to their hotel in the background.
Dick - Harry - Jan - Lulu enjoying drinks and supper at O'Neill's Pub. There was a lot of talk about The Tamaqua Paper.
Can you think of a better way to re-live the past with old friends than having a Guinness together in London?
Jan and Dick Davis were good friends of ours from our salad days in Tamaqua. Jan and Dick were managing the family funeral home and sponsoring the biddy league baseball team - The Davis Morticians. Lulu and I had just got done building our cedar chalet from a kit and founding The Tamaqua Paper. Jan and Lulu met thru the La Leche League - and formed a play group.
Both the women and kids from that play group have been very successful.
Then the Davis's moved to Arizona for business - and much later we moved to Tallahassee when Lulu became a Seminole Professor. Jan and I keep in touch over the Internet - but there is nothing like old friends meeting in a far away place and enjoying some good times together. You get to have a parallax view of what was happening back then - and things were not always as they seemed.
The Davis's come to the UK usually every year. The Davis roots are in Wales - and brother Jack has a home there.
I like to think that Jan and Dick came to London to see the Durham Miners Gala Event on our advice - but really they came to spend some time with family. They had a few extra days to spend in town - and according to Dick - a ton of Marriot Points to stay at St Pancras Hotel - the best of the best in England. Since the hotel is only about a 1/2 mile from our flat - we just had to touch base.
A little about the hotel. In 2012 - the St Pancras Hotel had just completed a $500 million restoration. It was the headquarters and gateway to the Olympics. Every time we took a train to Olympic Park - we went to St Pancras Station. See the hotel her -
Dick kept insisted that they were in this fine hotel on travel points - but the closest thing I had to a heart attack in London was when I looked at the rack rate sign on the hotel check-in desk. Remember - one pound equals $1.50.
The Tamaqua couple were not in the Royal Suite - but it was close. Before I would pay that much to stay anyplace - I would buy a car and stay in the parking lot.
We pretended we were swimming back in the Bungalow Pool at night - and we were looking for places to hide from the cops.
We first met at the O'Neill Pub across the street from their hotel. We had drinks and pub food - and two pints were way too much for me. We talked for hours - probably getting too loud - like old guys do when having good old times and their hearing aid batteries die.
One of the favorite quotes of the night was - you could always tell when the Davis's were doing embalming because the Tamaqua sewer lines would dump directly into the Schuylkill River. Take that Philadelphia.
The next day - the Davis's visited our apartment and we talked more. After that - we had a real treat - swimming in the most beautiful and strange pool grotto ever. We were not drinking anything but were just giggling on our old friendships. Like kids - we posed for our Beatles Abbey Road pictures.
After that we found a restaurant that reminded us all of the Palma Maria - our old Tamaqua/Casselberry Restaurant. We walked to our apartment - clung to the last moments - then Dick and Jan walked up the street - into the London darkness - ready to catch an early plane. As I write they are flying non-stop to San Francisco and on to the rest of their lives and reality.
The St Pancras Hotel is so over the top - but we were the entertainment as we walked down the grand staircase - thru the main lobby - and to the pool grotto.
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