will we get home?

Remember that threat of a strike at Heathrow Airport on the day we left for England?  Well today at 5 pm they voted not to accept the offer and to walk out on strike.  Monday August 5, 2019 is their scheduled day.  That is the day we are scheduled to fly home from Heathrow in London.  Does this sound like a good thing?

six of us decided to skip the quilt show today and do a walking tour of the city of Birmingham England.  My Fitbit had over 16,000 steps back at the hotel by 2 pm.

After breakfast we headed to the Birmingham museum of Art.  Admission is free.  They have a fantastic section on how WWII affected the city. There are mummies in the Ancient Egypt Section.

Great pieces of porcelain from the King’s tables dating back  to the 1100’s. 

We walked then to the center of the town and strolled the pedestrian malls and headed toward the Bullring. The Bullring is a  4 story shopping center housed in two gigantic buildings and connected to the Grand Central Station. It is the larges t shopping center in all of the United Kingdom.

There has been a market on that site since the Middle Ages when Peter de Bermingham obtained a charter from Henry II in 1154. The original merchants were 4 weavers, a tailor, a smith and a purveyor. Within 10 years it had become a major cloth trade center. 

We headed next to lunch at a Middle Eastern cafe where we had baklava and cardamom tea.  

All through the streets were armed enforcement officers and these huge heavy barricades that could be closed to shut the street down.  On many of the intersections we were funneled to walk through these attractive arches that were recording our visual appearance and scanning for facial recognition.  

We live in interesting times.