I ended my stay in London with a low-key day in Potters Bar.  I spent the day preparing for my trip home, laundry was the main focus of the day and a few odds and ends.  It was a very nice day with Clara and her children.  Packing was a pain, but it always is.  I had mixed feelings about leaving  Clara and Eric were perfect hosts and I had a great time with them, but I was feeling travel weary and was missing Inez and the kids.  I also was not looking forward to the ordeal of flying home, airplanes are never comfortable and I was going to be spending a lot of time in them.  I really cannot complain though, I’d rather fly and get home in a day, than have to take a steamer across the ocean for weeks at a time.  The hour of my departure arrived, I woke up at 4 AM finished up my last minute packing and organizing at was off to the train station by ten after five.  I caught the train in Potters Bar to Findsbury Park, where I connected to the Tube (Metro as we called them in Italy) Piccadilly Line and rode it out to Heathrow Airport, it took about 1 1/2 hours to get there.  I had plenty of time to check my luggage and go through security before the plane started loading.  The flight was just the way I liked them, uneventful, I did watch Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” and thought it was good.  The CGI is a little weird, though I think it is weird in most movies so that isn’t saying much.  The movie seemed to go very fast.  I tried sleeping a bit, but as you may know, airplanes are not really designed for that purpose.  While en-route to Detroit my connecting flight to Salt Lake City was canceled and Delta rerouted me to catch a flight to Chicago and from there to Salt Lake City.  (continue reading…)

I went to the V&A Museum today.  They had art from all over the world and across many era’s.  I particularly enjoyed the Sculpture and Ceramics exhibits.  They had a huge section on the 6th floor dedicated to ceramic art and the history of ceramics from all over the world.  The ceramics was organized in a loose time-line and the work from different regions was place together according to the time-line so you could comparatively see where the different cultures were in their ceramic techniques at the same point in world history.  (continue reading…)

Today was spent at the National Gallery in London. I was able to see work from all over the world.  I spent about 5 hours there and just started to scratch the surface of what was available.  I loved being able to see work from all over the world, Ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, the Middle East, and the British Isles.  They even had a history of clocks and of coinage from around (continue reading…)