When I left Nick and Mark in Paris, I took the Eurostar back to London and stayed in London for three nights at my friend Stephanie‘s apartment. She is a friend that I met in the US, when I lived in Boca Raton, and she moved to London in 2016. I met up with her in January when I first got here to have brunch and catch up. So when I was back in London in April, she was so gracious to let me stay at her place in exchange for cat-sitting her sweet kitty, Vienna. And she has a lovely apartment! It’s right in the middle of London, in the Marylebone area. It was nice to be in a place by myself again where I could do what I wanted. I mostly just laid around and relaxed while I was at Stephanie’s house which felt so nice! Sunday I had to travel to Falkirk, Scotland, which is close to Edinburgh. It's a 4.5 hour train ride from London to Edinburgh, but by the time you factor in the walking, waiting, transferring, and such, I had traveled from about 11am to about 6pm when I got to my hotel in Falkirk. I wasn’t feeling great Saturday and was not looking forward to riding trains all day Sunday, but luckily Sunday I woke up and was feeling a bit better. So off to Falkirk I went.
One thing I had to get done in London this week while I was there was to submit my paperwork for my Ghana visa. I’m planning to go back to Ghana for a couple of weeks in June and July, after I leave Rwanda. More on that later. Anyway, it’s a long and complicated process to get a Ghanaian visa. I had to fill out all these forms online (they were confusing and I had MANY questions I had to keep writing to them to get clarification on). And then I had to print off all the pages and actually bring them along with my passport, to the Premium Application Center in downtown London. I had an appointment for 11 o’clock on Friday morning. It turned out to be quite an easy process – they didn’t ask me any questions. I was mostly nervous that they were going to have questions about why I’m an American citizen wanting a Ghanaian visa in England. But they didn’t ask me anything. It was just the processing of paperwork from what I gathered. Except I had to pay 18 pounds for them to “reserve” my a spot on a plane for me to go to Ghana, since I didn’t have my plane ticket. They said that I had to have an itinerary (which meant a plane ticket) even though I didn’t have a visa yet. That was quite an upside-down process to me, but what could I do besides pay them? Ugh. After that, they said my visa would be ready three days from now, which is what I paid for. But I can’t go back to pick it up until May 15, so I hope it will be there when I get there. What an annoying process. I did get an email a few days later letting me know it was ready. I hope there’s a Ghanaian visa in my passport!
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