Nairobi...

...with 14 hours in London along the way. We arrived about an hour late into Heathrow, further limiting our time there, and made our way by cab to Ford's place in Notting Hill.

A cab, you say? But the Heathrow express takes 15 minutes and gets you right into Paddington station. What idiot would take a cab into London on a Sunday evening with the rest of London returning from weekends away?

And you would be right to say so. But Ford ordered a car for us and it was about the same cost, and it only took about 50 minutes, about the same time it would take the other way too.

So on to the Mall Tavern with Ford and her beau Spencer (who is, by the way, way too good for her), where we met up with Cob and Gita, Rick, and Amanda and Blair for a few pints and a $700 plate of Shepherd's Pie. Man, that city is expensive, made more so by our government's very effective 'strong dollar policy'.

Later, we headed back to Ford's child un-friendly apartment to put Jack to bed and have a few more beers.

Seriously, candles and framed photos on the floor? It's like she wanted our child to be injured.






In the morning we headed back to Heathrow and boarded our 9.5 hour flight, all during the day. Not a lot of naps for Jack. Almost none, in fact. But we were in Business class, and the flight was half empty. Our two seats for 2.5 people turned into four. And a friendly seven-year old boy from Majorca named Daniel helped us to entertain Jack.

The next day we spent hanging out at Kevin and Bonnie and Harper (2) and Pippa's (2.5 months) house and tooling around the suburbs of Nairobi. The Benders live in an area called Lavington, in a big old house with a big yard. Reminded us a bit of our place in Vientiane. As it was a school holiday in Kenya, Kevin and Bonnie's nanny and gardner had all their kids hanging around. It was camp Bender.

I joined the kids for some football, along with the guard in goal (fitting, I guess).



And Jack had a blast running around the yard with the kids.