Off today with Yana for a Grand Tour of Europe. Now that we
have decided to potentially move
to Australia, it's time that she
discovered some of Europe, though at the age of 11 it's clear that she will only have a
limited capacity to appreciate it.
We had intended to go across by boat, but the weather was not good, and we ended up going
through the Channel Tunnel:
Into London today by train, and visited
the Tower of London, then
shopping in the West End, notably
at Foyles, where an encyclopaedia salesman
tried to sell us a set
of Encyclopædia
Britannica. I was not convinced.
Heard the news on the radio this morning: 邓小平 (Deng Xiaoping) is dead. Within an hour I
was on my way to the airport, where for the first time
in Frankfurt I had a reasonable
departure lounge. Then off on the overnight flight to Beijing.
Pickup in Beijing was strange. This was
my first visit to China, and it was only marginally what I expected it to be.
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