Off and Running--er, Walking

In London now for two days, and I've walked at least a third farther than I've really needed to. This is due to several factors:
1. The streets of London are randomly organized, randomly named, and randomly change without warning.
2. The street you start on can be renamed at least three times before you find your intersection.
3. The street you are looking for may have a different name than the one you are looking for at the intersection where you think it should be.
4. Some streets never actually show up on the map in the London Streets A-Z book (eg Portobello Road)
5. I'm seriously challenged when it comes to map reading.
6. My chief map reader is not traveling with me.

Despite these setbacks, I have managed to find all the places I have looked for, and a lot of unexpected things in between. Yesterday I took the long route from Oxford Street, shopping mecca, back to Sussex Gardens street and my hotel. I did not mean to take the long route, but factors 1,2 and 3 as listed above were at work. Today I set out to find a nearby museum and walked three blocks in the wrong direction before realizing it (factor 5). Later in the day I accidentally found a road that was not on the map, one I wanted to go to, on my way to another place. These were factors 3 and 4 at work. Of course if factor 6 were different, none of the extra huffing and puffing would have been necessary.

Nevertheless, I managed to see The Wallace Collection, an astounding museum of amazing paintings, furniture, porcelain, armour and paintings, all amassed by one family in a house that was built to showcase the collection in the late 1800's. It was given to the British people and is kept now as a public museum with free admission. I actually looked at the whole museum, though I needed some shoring up with a lunch of quiche and tea in the charming museum restaurant. I must admit I skimmed through some of the armor, impressive though it was. Some college art class was blocking all the displays, sketching different specimens, so I had a good excuse to keep moving.

Empowered by finding that treasure, I set out for a known subway station and got off at another that I thought would be close to the road where I hoped to find Books for Cooks, purported to be the largest bookstore of cookbooks anywhere. I thought I had the route all figured out but never did find the connecting road. After a few false starts and retracing of steps, I did indeed find the bookstore and enjoyed perusing its truly huge number of cookbooks. I ended up being only a few storefronts away from Portobello Road, which was another destination. This is the road I still have yet to find on the map. I have stared at the quadrant where it should be and it is not there. It is supposed to be an antique market, but the antiques only show up on Saturday.

Much as I might like to look at all those antiques when they are on display, the chance of successfully finding the road again at the right time is relatively small. Unless I feel like walking for more miles in various directions, interesting as the sights might be along the way, I will stick with a known route and save the wandering for when my feet don't hurt and I have a map reader accompanying me.