And so it is with me and London. I love it, just as I love Marcello (though not as much, obviously) and the only way I can stand not being there is to go over all the things that were bothersome. (There is nothing of that kind with him; my strategy with him is to write him every day and work towards our being together. I have no problems, even minor ones, with my dear fiance.)

So then, London....

If you are like us then you spend a lot of time in transit, specifically on the upper floor, front seats of a double-decker bus. Is there a better, cheaper way of seeing the city? I doubt it. But buses are far from perfect. The drivers (who are not paid from the public's pocket) are...aggressive at times, surly at others, and are almost never friendly. They sit in plexiglas/metal cages and never seem to acknowledge thanks. There are good and bad ones, to be sure, and one even announced the stops (all the stops have location names)...but some of them need remedial Dealing with the Public courses, esp. the one on the bus we took back from Greenwich (I believe; not sure) who got into a Point of Principle fruitless argument with a rider that was apparently as stubborn as him (all bus drivers I encountered were men)...a Point of Principle so unrelenting that apparently the only solution was to have another bus stop by to pick all of us up, because the bus driver wouldn't drive as long as the disgruntled rider argued, which he did at great length. I have never experienced this in Toronto and cannot imagine why the Arriva training (Arriva is the name of the bus company) didn't drop the hint that if someone was going to push a Point of Principle, you just tell him to go away (which is what happens in Toronto). The only time the whole ridership has to leave a bus in Toronto is if said bus is suddenly 'out of service' due to too many buses being on the route (happened to me more than once on the Cummer bus up in Scarborough).

So then, buses: perfectly nice most of the time, but on a cold afternoon when everyone wanted to get going asap, things were slowed down because of the traditional British bulldog character, which really doesn't help on public transit.

Oh, and did I mention there's no transfers? Okay, consider that point made.

Hmm, what else...

...pedestrians who step on your foot on Oxford St. on Saturday night...women who think that if they dress like Kate Moss or Victoria Beckham they can be a)hip and b) pull it off and boy, are they wrong on both counts; the only thing they have right is the sour, unimpressed look...if there's any good pizza places in London, I have yet to find them...the curious lack of decent service in places where you'd think they would be a little bit more eager to be helpful...the concept of 'first class' train tickets when, as far as I could tell, there was barely a difference between those seats and the regular ones...smoking in restaurants and pubs (unlike Toronto, Glasgow, and other civilized cities, I encountered smoke just when I didn't need it on Saturday morning when I was trying to eat at Picasso's; luckily they left or else I would have had to move, hacking all the way)...

...but you can see these are all small things, and that on the whole I love London. No doubt once I live there i will discover real problems, but those I expect to be far outweighed by real pleasures. And after the next few months, small annoyances will remain just that - small.

Two places I must mention that serve great food are A Rock & Sole Plaice in Covent Garden and Beach Burrito Cafe in Soho. Fish and chips served up right, and Mexican food in a lovely picnic-type atmosphere in the other. I can't wait to go back to both, as well as back to Marine Ices, which was inexplicably closed when we visited; after a long walk through Camden, penne and ice cream is just the thing...