Location, Location, Location

A universal truth – whether or not you are talking about real estate or the distance from the location where you exit your Heathrow flight to where you board the London Express train that takes you to Paddington station. Let’s just say it is a pretty long walk, which is another way of saying that pretty much every muscle and joint from my hips down are feeling the pain this morning.

On the other hand…I am looking out my hotel window at 5 in the morning and I see a blue neon light reading “Savoy Theatre” above a Union Jack sign reading “Let it Be…Beatlemania returns.” Next to it is the grand entrance to the Savoy Hotel – stuff of legend, a near replica of the image on one of my postcard from the 50’s. Even the taxi’s look almost the same. The guest list looks something like this: George Gershwin, Frank Sinatra, Lena Horne, Noël Coward. Edward VII, Enrico Caruso, Charlie Chaplin, Harry Truman, Joan Crawford, Judy Garland, Babe Ruth, Laurence Olivier, Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbra Streisand, and the The Beatles.

Above the hotel I see blue sky and I know that if I were to pass through that famous entrance and walk out the other side, I would be looking at the Thames.

In about an hour, I will step out the entrance of my distinctly less luxurious hotel (yes, I could clearly hear my next door neighbor snoring through the paper-thin walls last night) and I will be standing on The Strand.

Well worth the walk.