London

 London was a case of near-misses.  Of course, "near-misses" could also mean "near-hits", and it was.  During the morning, we did all of the familiar tourist stuff like the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, and Trafalgar Square.  We had lunch there and ordered hamburgers.  It could have been beef.  Hard to tell.  I asked the guide if the bus could go by Savile Row and the Ministry of Defence.  After all, my two big loves are The Beatles and James Bond, and they were kind of enough to do that. After lunch, we went by The Old Curiosity Shoppe, and got pictures there.  Then, it was back to the hotel.
 I dropped my camera, and the film popped out.  I really wasn't sure for the rest of the trip if my camera worked or not.  Thankfully, it was okay.  After a brief rest, two of the older women in the group and me decided we wanted to go to the British Museum.  We took the tube there, and arrived 30 minutes before closing.  I saw the Rosetta Stone, and that was about it.  As we were leaving the museum, I stepped off of a curb and about got run down by a car.  I forgot to look right and then left.  You know, England is backwards traffic-wise.  Mrs. Sitton, one of our tour group, dropped her camera in the street, and it broke into several pieces.  She ended up buying postcards and slides of the places we went afterwards, and she even had to buy another suitcase later on to hold the stuff. 
 We got back to the hotel, and I wrote a letter to Apple Records in London suggesting that they record me and my friends back in the States.  I thought it was a good letter, but I never heard back.  I guess they got a lot of letters like that.  We went to the theatre that night to see "The Mousetrap" by Agatha Christie.  I guess it was a good play, but I slept through most of it.  I was still feeling the jet lag.  I didn't find out until years later that one of the actors in the play later went on to play "M" in the James Bond films--Robert Brown.  I wish I had known that at the time. 
 We really didn't spend enough time in London.  But, July 8th was to bring us Rome and another near-miss.