SNOW IN LONDON - DECEMBER 1981

THERE ARE NEITHER PHOTOS NOR VIDEOS FROM THIS TRIP.

However, there is a strong memory of a snow fall in London. The story is the following: From December 5th through 10th, 1981, I was in London for a meeting. The first memory is from the Hotel. I was booked at the Kenilworth, and when I got there - by 9:30 p.m. on a winter night - I was given the smallest room I've ever seen in my life: I had to open the bathroom door in order to enter the room, get into the bathroom, and close the room door... That was too much! As there were no more rooms available, next morning I was moving to another Hotel, which with the currency restrictions then in force in Portugal was not an easy task. I found the Grand, which was a nice place to stay, and where I was given the best room in the Hotel as they were working on the lift and it was not running. Compared with the Kenilworth, it looked like the Savoy… Two large window-doors, a big veranda, king size bed...
One of these days - probably December 8, 1981 -, it snowed a little bit. OK, a little bit, and it was chaos in London. The TV was telling everybody to stay at home, schools were immediately closed, trains not running, a mess...
By 4 p.m. I decided to see how things were, and took the last sightseeing bus departing from Piccadilly by that time. At 4:30 p.m. it was dark, but this 2H30 bus trip gave me an idea of the dimension of the disaster. On the streets, snow was completely melted… By Hyde Park there was a thin - probably three centimetres dick - cover of snow on the grass. This was all! And that was the disaster… What an experience!!!