The little things tell me I'm not in the US any more. Most Americans, I suppose assume it's the traffic I notice. It's not--not exactly. Posessing virtually no innate sense of left and right, I barely notice that cars are on the wrong side of the street. I quickly discovered that my sense of traffic is contextual and I cross streets like a native (except that I pay more attention to the traffic lights. These Londoners need no lessons from New Yorkers.) No, it's the other traffic differences, the little ones, that I notice.

London license plates jump out at me. They are narrower than ours and go across almost the width of the car. They contain no fancy slogans. No "America's Dairyland" or "Land of Lincoln." They are just large, black, block letters. You can read them for quite a distance. Kat, who has very good vision, might be able to read them a mile away. If the purpose of a license plate is to identify a car and not advertise a state, the London plates clearly are better. The pragmatic person inside me loves these license plates. For them, form supremely follows function.

London buses catch my eye too although I don't advocate copying them. Thinking about London buses makes me notice that London has buried utility wires. I hadn't thought about utility wires before thinking about the buses. Otherwise, those doubledecker red buses would cause a problem. I also love the redness of those buses. I'll probably take a picture of one if I ever get my camera out. (Pictures may be worth a thousand words but right now I'm working on the thousand words.) Mr. Philately swears I took a picture of anything red that I found on our first honeymoon so I'll probably repeat the feat.

Finally, it's the cabs. Milwaukee cabs exist but are rare. New York has many cabs but they are yellow and otherwise look like ordinary cars with a light on top. London cabs are black or full of advertising and look like old-fashioned cars from the outside. They are like PT Cruisers but much cuter. On the inside, well, on the inside they are like no cab I've ever seen. There is room for jump seats between the front and back seats but no jump seats are there. All our luggage fit there (although we travel fairly light.) I could have stretched out on that floor and slept on the diagonal. If I pay this much attention to British traffic, just think what I'll see when we get into heavy-duty sightseeing later today. (Note: This was written in the morning. I've done the sightseeing but I'm saving writing about it for another day.) But, in the meantime, your reporter here in London is here to tell you: it's the traffic that tells her she's not in Wisconsin any more.

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