Je pars If Providence broke out all the stops to keep me there, Nice was happy to see me go. Don't let the door smack you on your way out. It was spitting down rain, making things generally pretty miserable. The hot water was once again protesting, as any self-respecting French appliance should, work before 10 in the morning. The only thinga I will truly miss in Nice are the people I met there, and most of those will be gone by the end of this month, anyway. What could have happened --I need a place to stay, mate. --Meter's running, he said, pointing. --I can see that, thanks. --Meter's running, I mean, he said, as if he had somehow been in error the first time. --Ok, I need a place to stay, sir, do you have any suggestions? --You can't stay with me, the meter's running. --Ok, thanks, have a nice day, I said, opening the door. I don't care whose luck it is... We all know I'm, well, a dumbass. Many times I just do things without really thinking about what is actually being done. Absent minded, as we, the absent minded, refer to ourselves. This absent-mindedness sometimes results in striking, horrifying realizations. Like today, for example, when I took of my sunglasses at the Thomas Cooke Bureau de Change where I do what you do at those places. I left them there on the bloody counter, which, by the way, is behind two security deboarding checks as well as customs. It took a small hole that opened up in the trademark gray London sky. It was a bit harsh and I moved to get my sunglasses. Startling, horrifying realization. Luckily, the lady at the info desk was extremely helpful (one can only imagine and shudder at what the situation would have been if this woman were French) and called around for me. A cleaning lady with a right tackle looking guy of a security escort came out to bring them to me. When I was effusive in thanking them all, the cleaning lady turned around and said 'Well, you know, thank you for letting me do my nice deed for the day,' then walked away. I love the English. It's so good to be here. London Town My hotel is crap, and, given that I'm in the second most expensive metropolis in the world, I'm paying 40� a night for 2 nights for it. I don't have a bathroom, the entire floor I'm on smells strongly of urine, the bed sinks to the point it looks like that couch in the Reebok commercial, except that it's also tiny (I know the British in general are not, well, a large people, but this is a little ridiculous. My feet actually do stick off the end. I immediately thought of Road to Wigan Pier's first chapter, where he describes the conditions of the house he's investigating. Nowhere near as bad as it was in 1930, obviously, the place would be out of business otherwise, but the bed leans more that way than anything made after 1950.). The location of this hotel, though, is the entirety of its goodness, so to speak. The window looks out onto a small, intricate garden and a terrasse where people have afternoon tea (yea, they actually do that). Birds sing, and air lightly scented with flowers (a more talented and worldy writer would tell you what flowers, but sorry I've no such horticultural distinction) washes away, at least temporarily, the ever-present scent of urine. Down the street--literally, it's less than a block away--is the British Museum. It's rather cool to know that you're a block from one of the greatest collections of knowledge on Earth. I had never been there, before, so that was the first thing I did today. The Rosetta Stone What a cool experience. I figured it to be bigger, somehow. I also always thought of it, though, as having been written with the express purpose of relating the language of formal hieroglyphics. It was really rather ordinary, though, but much has been inferred from it. It was a decree that established, of all things, a formal cult in Egypt. It's odd to look at something so small, a gateway through which so much knowledge has been gained. It's something visible through which one feels the connections that connect everything and everybody on the planet.