London, day two

I spent the morning checking out, finding a breakfast place (Who knew that a bacon "buttie" could be so tasty!) and wandering around a bit before the meeting

The second day was just as good as the first, even without a few people from the US, who could not come because of the gub'mit shutdown.  Another victory over science!  After the last talk I hurried out to try to see a little more of London:

It really is a lovely city only slightly blackened by roving gangs of drunk Polish soccer hooligans.  

Next stop, a proper English curry.  I found a suggestion for a place on TripAdvisor with the very unpromising name of "Masala Zone".  The decor was kind of like an Indian TGI Fridays, which deepened my suspicion.  However, the food was fantastic!  I can't remember having Indian food that tasty, except maybe at Ajanta.  

From there, I stared blankly at the tube map to figure out how to get back to Paddington station, and then smugly walked by the huge crowd of people jostling each other to get into the elevator: how long could the stairs be?  Very long, it turned out.  Comically long.  193 steps long.  It was no big deal because I was going down, but jeez.

Next:  I managed to get on the right trains and ended up at the airport.  Americans will be happy to hear  that just like in 'Merica, in the UK they reserve their security jobs for the most slothful and humorless of their primary school dropouts.  Two of their finest, and I'm not making this up, thought that the packet of bacon that I was bringing back with me was very suspicious and unpacked every item of my backpack twice because of it. 

After another plane, bus and car I eventually made it back just after midnight.