On the Ground

I'm not here any more, did  I say?  I'm in Amsterdam, although my clean underwear is in Heathrow.   And here's a puzzle for you, or several.

One, I never did understand airport shopping. Who (in the blue blazes) would spend airport prices to buy the kind of high end merchandise that you probably wouldn't bother buying at home?  And don't start telling me about duty free--the duty free Grey Goose vodka is twice the price it would be home in Palookaville (um, so I am  told).    But then, I never did understand duty free either.

And not just stuff.  Turns out there's a caviar restaurant in Heathrow Terminal 5.   I stood on the upper deck gazing down with admiration about 9 am today.  There were five  customers, all solo guys.  I couldn't see well enough--maybe they were just knocking back scrambled chicken eggs, not the fishy kind. But I like to fancy they were digging into platters of Beluga.  How does it go with cornflakes?


Travel footnote:  Heathrow, for what it is worth, has become a trifle less awful than it was the last time I was here, a couple of years back.   It  takes you just about 90 minutes top get from your landing dock at Terminal 1 to inside-security at Terminal 5, and the walk is about like crossing Minnesota but traffic flows pretty smoothly.