This crowded. Maybe it's because we have generally visited Portobello Road in the winter but we've never seen such a dense mob. I had more trouble standing and walking a long time on this trip, possibly because the joints in my feet have been more messed up by RA. I got my new orthotics yesterday and I'm hopeful they will help. Still, you need good weaving skills, some verbal courtesy and the occasional gently applied sharp elbow to get through.
Here we are in the American Airlines lounge at beautiful (not) Heathrow Airport, waiting for a flight to Chicago and then home. Paris is definitely off. Besides, my back has not been doing well at all and trekking through another set of museums would be really hard. We may try it again in the spring.
We returned to the National Gallery to catch some of the stuff we didn't get the first time. This is the central rotunda. But for now I'm actually looking forward to a nice nine hour sit.
Or almost everybody with a real camera when they visit the British Museum. That's what we did yesterday, to the point of exhaustion, on our first full day here. The central courtyard was covered with this eye-popping roof some years ago. The geometry is irresistible.
Parts of the place, particularly the famous Egyptian galleries, were impossibly crowded. On a weekday in October. Lots and lots of school groups with small children. People from all over the world. We still don't have our clocks reset and it wore us out.
We are still figuring out what to do today, depending on the typically damp autumn weather. Tosca at the English National Opera tonight.
And we still don't know if we will get to Paris on Tuesday. Much of France is in another labor dispute meltdown and there may be a general strike on our travel day. There are worse places to get stuck than London but the hotel is fully booked and we don't have a place to stay after Monday night.
