Love has many prices. One of them is accepting the imperfections of the person, place, or thing that has found its way into your heart. The sum of my love of the many geographical twists and turns that make London what it is, is made more complicated by my uncanny ability to get lost when blazing a new trail for myself and anyone with me. When one covers as much of London by foot as I do, anyone has the potential to become very frustrated with the sheer anarchy of the street layout; nevertheless, even the streets that run in a straight line suddenly become a path with a different nomenclature.

Well, being temporarily lost in London was happening to my traveling sidekick, Gordon Morgan, and I again. We'd covered much of the city the previous six days. Yet it was Gordon, a novice to the seductions of this city until I prodded him to take this trip with me, who bailed me out on a few occasions, when my tendency to lose my sense of spatial whereabouts kicked in. I had sometimes over-read, over-analyzed, and over-everything-else'd concerning the maps in my Eyewitness Travel Guide of London. Earlier in the week, this foible of mine cost us some valuable sightseeing time. We were only a few blocks away from a grand London skyline view at a great vantage point in Hampstead Heath, but that time I turned sidekick (with the adjective "comedic" inserted before sidekick). The result: for the next ninety minutes, we would be bussed all over the northern perimeter of Hampstead, then down the A1 motorway to some shopping centre/bus hub combo! But then again, it could've been the plain ol' leftover curse of Dracula that I could justify for my comedy of errors; after all, that creature did haunt the area we ran circles around in the latter part of the 19^th century. Only this time, Dracula sucked out some of my travel focus and energy instead of a pint of my O positive blood.

This time my goal had been to get to the eccentric museum showcase of the very late Sir John Soane. Now Gordon and I started walking along Queensway with little confidence after jumping off the Tube at Holburn Station. The rain had let up a bit, but it was still as cold and drizzly a day as I had ever endured while visiting Great Britain. I was freezing something awful, even though I had my big red ski mask turned cap when folded over and three layers of clothing under my yellow raincoat. My daily planner of sites to see was stuffed inside my Eyewitness Guide. Both were very soggy and wet, as I kept taking them out of my backpack and looking at them during the day like some football coach calling plays during an ice bowl match up. Our day of exploring, like all the others before, had begun just before 7 a.m. Yet what was supposed to be a grand final day of exploring London was turning into a test of endurance by late morning.

The Soane Museum was part of a tenement row of homes that surrounds Lincoln's Inn Fields, southeast of Holburn Station. Yet the side streets on the map didn't have any names. So, at first, my terrible sense of direction decided to take us north, believing it was navigating us south. Soon we approached the street sign that showed that we had reached Theobald's Road, off the grid-like map of Holburn. We even came upon some fields, too, better known as Bloomsbury Square. So, once again, we trudged back to Holburn Station and I counted the apparent blocks in the other direction until we'd reach another nameless side street that was to lead us directly to our destination. Gordon and I headed south one block and then two, but I still felt some trepidation, fearing the map was going to mislead me. My partner, as he always did, just took my antics in stride. He never complained about some of my initial and misguided treading into the unfamiliar parts of London. His answer to feeling good all day was to take an aspirin each night before bedtime. His left leg, many times having a build-up of fluid in it and needing occasional draining, didn't even give him any fits. The damp, British weather seemed to be a great tonic for his ailment. He miraculously completed the daily six-to-eight hour marches around town, up and down the continuous flights of stairs and escalators of the Underground's close to fifty different lines we networked with to see the sites. Gordon wasn't even feeling the chills of the rain and wind that I was experiencing, though he was wearing a heavier ski jacket.

We finally embarked upon the nameless short road on the map that seemed to lead straightway to the Fields. At least the locals did have a conspicuous name for it: Remnant Street. I commented, "Well, let's try this, because the map says it will still lead to that park, and then the museum is somewhere around there. Damn, it's friggin' cold out here. I shoulda brought another jacket!" Gordon was holding the umbrella over me as I again took off my gloves and unloaded the travel guide from my backpack to again study the map, still expecting the worse, and hoping for some reassurance that I wasn't totally incompetent in finding places. The pages of the guide were presented in different colours of ink that were running as well as sticking together. My written out daily itinerary had smeared so bad I could barely read half of it, and we still had a few more hours of Saturday exploring to do.

We proceeded down this glorified alley, and all of a sudden this little street started veering off to the south a bit. But as the map said, we finally saw the park called Lincoln's Inn Fields. Directly in front of us was a street full of apartments, but worry entered through my stomach again.

"Gordon, Lincoln's Inn Fields is the name of the park, is it also the street name, too? What's the address of that place? This is very confusing."

"Didn't you say 13?" he responded back, as he could tell I didn't want to have to take my wet gloves off to get my travel book out of my backpack again.

So we started down the block, and immediately I noticed a small crowd of people standing in front of a front door entrance halfway down the street, some of them semi-jumping around on the top steps trying to keep warm. I knew this had to be the place. We arrived less than a minute later, but my neurotic mind was wondering why this group of people were standing around. I expected to be told that the museum was closed. I voiced my concern for all to hear. One of the visitors, a man dressed in a top overcoat, appearing to be in his sixties, told me that only a few people could be in the museum at any one time.

"It is free, though, isn't it?" I asked with a bit of the trepidation, thinking Gordon and I would have to pay some kind of entrance fee. For me, if I have to pay to get in, then I just won't get in. London has so many non-admission charge venues to visit, that you will never run out of them. Especially since icons like the Victoria and Albert Museum are free now. Just off the bottom steps stood a woman in a plaid overcoat. She wore circular small spectacles and had freckles on her face, wore no make up, much of her red hair peeking out of her beige hat. This short but stout visitor assured us this was a free exhibit to see, something she'd been waiting for a long time to experience herself. This young woman was a breath of fresh air in the sense that most of the twenty-something women Gordon and I encountered on the subways, buses, or while walking along the streets, fashioned frowns on their made up faces as they quickly darted by us, seemingly in no mood to talk to anyone. Gordon and I conversed on the steps with this young lady, waiting for a reprieve from the elements. Every now and then for the next fifteen minutes, one or two people would try to squeeze out the door in the midst of the waiting crowd. Then an older lady not dressed in any outdoor gear would peep out and say with authority, "We can take one more" or "We have room for two more."

Our new female acquaintance, whose name we never managed to ascertain, told us that she'd come from around the area of Torquay, the birthplace of Agatha Christie, and located on the southwest coast of Devon. She was an avid architectural buff who had read and studied the works of the Georgian architect and just couldn't wait to go in and visit the museum, which in this drizzly damp weather, was like Odysseus trying to get back home.

I was the only one of the crowd who commented about out how cold it was, telling people as my teeth were chattering between syllables, "Wyoming has dry humidity. Forty or so degrees in Wyoming feels much warmer than here." The sun tried to show a bit of itself as the wind started to pick up, but finally we were next to the doorway after a succession of tourists exited the museum. Again, the prim-acting museum guide came out and announced "We can have three more people, are you three together?" looking at Gordon, me, and the Torquay-ite. Our newfound acquaintance quipped back, "No, but we'll all go in anyway." So the three of us entered the doorway in much the same way people sneak into a house sometimes. I felt like I was in a human sardine can as I began to temporarily abandon my wet coat and backpack in the foyer of the museum. All this time, the woman who let us in gave us a lecture on the do's and don'ts of being a guest in the Soane home, which houses some of the most priceless and antiquated objects in London. We started to spread out and look around on the ground floor.

Five minutes after exploring the east side of the ground floor, I was getting antsy to go upstairs. My Eyewitness Guide told of the strange walls on the first floor that could be interchanged, but when I asked the guide if I could go see them, she held out her left hand, saying there was a capacity of viewers up there already, and we'd have to wait awhile until some of the visitors came downstairs. So Gordon and I proceeded west to see the ancient Egyptian sarcophagus of Seti, the outside light shining on it as the glass dome above was transparent, allowing life to enter the crypt we found ourselves in.

Finally, Gordon and I made a swoop back to the main area to ask if we could go upstairs, and again, we were admonished to stand in line until the next pair came down. A couple of minutes later, two more people came down. At last, we were granted passage. I hurriedly asked the guide, "Where is that room with all the changing panels?"

"I will take you to the room this moment," she said, following Gordon and I as we plodded up the stairs.

When we got to the room, the Devonite appeared right in front of us as the museum guide began to explain Soane's collection of Turner, Hogarth, and other early 19^th Century paintings. Then the guide showed us how ingenious Sir John was in being able to hide other panel walls behind the walls we saw when we entered the room. These moveable panels displayed more historically significant works of art. Even Gordon, one who doesn't really get that excited over anything (when he likes something, he says flatly "It's okay" or "It's fine"), gasped with an open mouth at how the walls changed so quickly and easily. I could tell that the very kindly, but plain-looking young woman was having one of the best times of her life.

Several minutes later, Gordon and I looked around the remainder of the upstairs, finding more of the strange and antiquated objects that Soane fancied. We finally went back downstairs to do some more exploring. Yet before mutually deciding to leave, I told Gordon that I just had to go back upstairs and get a glimpse of that room with the changing walls. I went upstairs again without any problem, as the guide was off somewhere else, and stood there just amazed at the way another quirky soul expressed himself.

After we gave our compliments to the guide for a nice time, we ventured back into the cold, passing an even bigger line of people, not only on the stairs but on the sidewalk as well; after all, Saturdays were the busiest days of the week for this attraction. I could feel my bones freezing again as I took out my guidebook and itinerary to see what point of interest we were closest to next.

Over the course of that week, I had exposed Gordon to so much of the pulse of London that this particular venture abroad mostly appears as a blur to me. Yet for some reason, it was this particular slice of our trip that still comes to my senses, especially when I am walking around my hometown in Wyoming in the midst of a cold rain.

Roy A. Barnes is a freelance writer residing in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Since 1998, he has slowly become better at navigating the city of London and surrounding areas with each of his seven trips there.

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