Saturday’s breakfast comes to us the same way as Friday’s dinner: on a buffet spread out in a big ballroom at the Radisson Edwardian. Most of it was traditional English breakfast: eggs, sausage, bacon, toast. We pondered how appropriate that is for a plane load of Indians (most of them are vegetarian). On the other hand, the buffet offered some intriguing vegetarian sausages as well as a fruit and yogurt bar.

We haven’t heard anything from the airline since we got dumped here yesterday afternoon, so out next stop is the lobby to find out what’s going on. The concierge pointed to a long line winding around the perimeter of the lobby. We divided up the sections of our morning paper and Obbie got in line at 10:15.

He reached the front of the line at 11:30, only to be told to come back at one. We are among only 19 passengers who joined the flight in London. Everyone else started in India, and they are going to be dealt with first. “Why don’t you go and have lunch.”

We’re still happily stuffed from our breakfast buffet, so we aren’t ready for lunch. Instead, we’ll go back to our room and crack open our last beer. 11:30 am may not seem like an appropriate time for a beer, but it is in this country, and it’s especially appropriate today.

At one o’clock we started milling around in the lobby with some of the other 18 non-Indians stranded in London. We shared the rumors we’re hearing about which airline will take us across the ocean and when.

One story widely circulating is that our plane landed with an engine on fire. We never heard this “officially,” but that could explain the alarms at the airport late Friday morning.

The hotel lobby is a zoo packed with displaced passengers and their baggage. The Indian crowd includes many families, with small children and elderly grandparents. Most of them seem to be testing the limits of their baggage allowances. Most of the open space in and around the lobby is occupied by suitcases the size of small cars.

The airplane guy appeared and told us to come back at 1:30. “We still need some more time to sort everything out.” But we’ve already checked out of our rooms, so we have nowhere to wait. “Maybe you should have lunch.” We’re still not hungry, so we’ll take a walk outside instead.

At 1:30 the airline guy still isn’t ready for us. It seems like he’s sincerely working on something and is close to nailing it down. He just can’t tell us about it yet. Once again, he suggests that we have lunch.

This time we took him up on it. The buffet is in a smaller room, and it looks a lot like Friday’s dinner buffet. We were munching on this now-familiar hotel buffet food when our friend from the airline appeared at our table. He seems proud to announce that we will be on Air India flight 125 leaving at 3:30 Sunday and arriving in Chicago at 6:30.

After lunch, we were booked into another room. We sent out another flurry of phone calls and emails. Many of our friends received a message that oozed with annoyance and frustration.

If we close our eyes, click our heels together three times and say, “there’s no place like home”… It’s not working. Ruby slippers must be a key ingredient to that bit of magic.

For the third night in a row, we’re making plans for our “last night in Europe.” One thing we know for sure is that we don’t want to stay hunkered down in a sterile airport hotel. We have plenty of time to take the tube into the city and do something.

We’ve seen reports of small crowds gathering to pay tribute to George Harrison at major Beatles sites. When we were hanging out with Jen & Gabe, they told us that they had never been to Abbey Road, even though they’ve lived in London for a few years. We called Jen & Gabe and invited them to meet us at the St. Johns Wood tube station for a visit to Abbey Road.

Getting there is easier than we expected. Our hotel is within a “Heathrow Airport free fare zone,” so as long as we board the right bus it’s a free ride to the tube station. It took about ten minutes.

We found Gabe waiting for us at St. John’s Wood station, and Jen arrived a couple of trains later. It’s a short walk to the studio with its long white graffiti-covered wall we visited two months ago.

The entire length of the wall is covered with flowers, candles and mementos. There’s a lot of poetry; some of it is written in pencil on a napkin, and some of it was neatly produced by a laser printer.

There are laminated pictures of George, pieces of artwork, a decorated ukelele, and hundreds of bundles of flowers with condolence cards. Though this “exhibit” was spontaneous and temporary, it’s one of the most moving displays we’ve seen on this oddyzee.

Having paid our respects, Jen & Gabe suggested that we see some parts of London we’d missed on our first visit. We took the tube to Soho and walked around with the mobs of club and pub hoppers. For fortification, we downed pints in a smokey basement pub called The Toucan.

We walked some more in the festively crowded club district of Soho. Then wandered along Regent Street and Bond Street, upscale shopping districts that are dark and quiet tonight.

Somewhere in between we passed 3 Saville Row, a fashionable professional office building. A bundle of flowers and a handwritten note betrayed that someone else recognizes this building’s place in history. It’s where the Beatles played their last public concert: the rooftop concert seen in the movie “Let It Be.”

We sat down for one more dinner together in Chinatown, and finished just as the pubs started closing. To maintain greater productivity in the work force, British pubs close at 11. We’re told it was only recently that they extended closing time past 9.

We followed the bar-time crowd into the nearest tube station. From here, these two American couples set out in opposite directions for our respective journeys home. We bid a hasty farewell to Jen & Gabe as they boarded their train for the East End, then we went to the other side of the platform to begin our journey back to Heathrow.

There was a bus waiting at the little transit center at Heathrow, but it was dark. When the driver woke up from his nap, he turned on the lights, fired up the motor, and allowed the small crowd of waiting passengers to board the bus.

We came back to our room at 1:30am. In Chicago, it’s only 7:30pm, still early evening. That’s where we hope to be at this time tomorrow.