Monday 23rd March Hampstead Heath, British Museum

On the last day I was in Venice I looked up what the weather forecast was for London to work out what combination of my vast wardrobe to wear. I havenot looked since, until this morning. I had planned on going to St Paul’s Cathedral and then Hampstead Heath, but decided that, since rain was forecast in the afternoon, I would change it and go to Hampstead first. Just as well I looked and changed my mind. I sat in the top of a double decker bus and got a good view of different parts of London. I was a bit confused when the bus dropped me not quite where I expected so went into the first nice looking place for my morning coffee to get out of the wind and read my map and plan. I was even more confused when I got into the shop – there was a table of English women practicing their Italian with their exercise books open and occasionally calling out to the lady behind the counter who was Italian. I sat down with my coffee and cake and a bit later the lady passed by my table, asked if I liked the cake and I replied in Italian. Si, Si. We went on talking for a bit in Italian. I wandered around the heath for a while. It was interesting – it had a gentle feel to it. Many of the trees were just starting to come out after winter. I took lots of photos of bare trees.

I wandered back through Hampstead. It has a nice villagey feel. An Englishman delivering groceries actually said hullo. Soup at pub was good – broccoli and stilton, altho’ it was a bit hard to taste the stilton. It came with fruit bread that I would normally serve with breakfast. It had raisins and was a bit sweet. I wonder if this is an English thing or if they had just run out of normal bread. I caught the tube from Hampstead and found it a bit off putting to have to take the lift down to the platform. I then went to the British Museum. Several years ago they enclosed the courtyard with a roof. It may be the largest covered courtyard in Europe, but there is now no where for the noise of many many schoolkids and many many visitors to go. They had run out of maps and the photocopied replacement was hard to read. I did have a look at some of the important things – the Rosetta Stone was probably most interesting, tho’ hard to look at for as long as I would have liked with all the surrounding people waiting their turn. I wandered around – amazing stuff from civilizations I had never heard of, so I got discouraged at how ignorant I am. I gave up and came home, but the bus was a bit hard to find because of one way streets and some road closures. By that time it was even windier and raining but I did see another bit of London. Sort of - the top window of the bus does not have windscreen wipers. More clothes tomorrow!