I love London!

It's the most exciting city in the world...a city which is a pretty good picture of our crazy world, today. Actually, today is a really sweaty heat wave in London. I got here about 24 hours ago, and it's kind of nice to be more or less done with the whole "following in Richard's footsteps" part of the trip--back to normal old life again, which is weird enough.

I'm sorry I'm still not getting any pictures up on here...I've got plenty, but I'm afraid I reached my maximum limit on memory back in Neuschwanstein. I may shortly be opening Blog Part Two, to find more space (and post smaller pictures, having learned my lesson).

Anyways, the fun adventure to report was the insane transit out of Wagner's city of love and death: I walked (with my outrageously heavy bags and fragile Murano glass gifts and all) from the inn to the vaporetto stop, took the unnecessarily slow vaporetto up the Grand Canal to the train station, ran through the train station (bruising anyone who got in the way with my outrageously heavy bags) to leap onto the train just as it was pulling out, rode to Verona, wandered around the outside of the train station (with outrageously heavy bags) until I found the proper bus stop, took a bus to the Verona airport (Verona, the Romeo and Juliet town, a lovely city I visited years ago), took a shuttle bus within the airport, took a flight to Gatwick--only 2 hours, shortest flight I've been on in years--then waited an absurdly long time in Gatwick to reclaim my outrageously heavy bag with all the fragile glass, took a shuttle train within Gatwick to its real train station, again made a mad dash for a train which I boarded with one minute to spare, to come up to London. I mean, I'm a big fan of mass transit and all...but I was really happy when my friend Andy showed up at Victoria station to pick me up IN HIS CAR. 'Cause this was getting kind of ridiculous. And frankly, the Tube today, with the heat wave and all, was no better.

Andy's hospitality has indeed been glorious, and I had a terrific (though sweaty) first day in London--including a completely random encounter with Ernesto and Jonathan, in St. James's Park this afternoon about 4 pm, not far from Buckingham Palace. (If you're looking for Ernesto, just go wherever there's royalty and he's bound to turn up.) I knew they were in London, but we hadn't figured out how we were going to meet. But this always happens to me in London--it happened with Bryan Lyson, it happened with Cyrus Hamlin, with Andy and with Gary, and now with these guys. I love this town!