Travel notes

In no particular order of importance, some snapshots from our recent trip to London to visit Amanda and Michael:

It's very disconcerting to be in a country where they speak English, although sometimes it sounds like a foreign language, and drive on the wrong side of the street. You never know where to look for oncoming traffic when you are walking. And when you are a passenger in a car it seems equally confusing figuring out where you are headed and where the round-abouts are really directing y ou.

Amanda and Michael's flat is on Kensington Gardens Square, near Bayswater, Hyde Park and a 15-minute walk from their old flat in Notting Hill. It's a first-floor flat which means that you look out their living room picture window that's at least five-feet high with white wooden shutters that fold into the wall right onto the sidewalk and narrow street that amazingly accommodates parked cars, city buses, delivery trucks and cars sometimes simultaneously. Two doors down is this hip neighborhood bar and restaurant where you can get eggs, coffee and pastry in the morning and martinis and tapas at night. The laundromat is less than a block away and there are a series of hair dressing, waxing, nail places within spitting distance. Across the street is Nandos where you can wave at the person taking your grilled chicken order over the phone.
It's, as they say, bustling with a steady stream of Moslem women in scarves , everyone talking on cell phones and a lot of people smoking.
As Michael says, there's a lot of energy. You could literally sit at the window and watch an all-day drama. It's like a day at the beach without the sand and sunscreen.
You can step out their front door and most times of the day can hail a taxi within five minutes.
You can also walk down the street and take the No. 23 bus and be on Bond Street next to Sufridges, the large, local-favored department store, within 10 to 15 minutes.
I now can identify the Marble Arch from a bus window two blocks away.

Last year we went to the races at Ascot, a sublimely British thing to do.
This year we went to the last night of the Proms at Hyde Park where Barry Manilow was the headliner. Really.
Think the 4th of July meets tailgating at a Steelers/Bears game. Thirty-seven thousand people with their picnics spread out on blankets (some had brought tables, tableclothes, candelabras , sliver, china and crystal) most waving the Union Jack flags, sipping champagne and ale and dipping into salmon pates, cheese plates and other nibblies. By the end of the evening, which celebrates music and patriotism -- you heard this random mix of Handel's Water Music, Copacabana and Auld Lang Syne.
At the end there were fireworks and this unforgettable scene of a park full of Brits -- we were with alumni of USC -- singing a full-force rendition of Britannia, God Save the Queen and then linking arms and singing Aud Lang Syne.
At the end, magically there appeared black plastic garbage bags near each blanket pad. People bent down, grabbed a bag and began disposing of their rubbish. All very civilized, sensible and efficient. Brilliant.

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