England swings hard in the summertime

The antique map is gorgeous, though it's showing a little wear since it was engraved in 1778. I'd stopped in the Portobello Road market stall hoping to find an old Chinese map. Instead, I was grasping a poster-size work of cartography headlined "Boheme, Silesie, Moravie" - the now-Czech homeland of my late grandfather.

I never expected to come home from London with that souvenir.

Surprise, however, is one of the great rewards of a visit to Britain's capital, a centuries-old center of empire, commerce and culture.