Covering the Olympics can be a logistical challenge. You can take the wrong bus and cost yourself half a day. You can get lost. You can miss the last bus departing from a venue late at night and find yourself wandering strange streets, looking for a cab.

Usually, though, the buses run on time, and you figure it all out, and sometimes you're rewarded with, as the British would put it, a ``brilliant" experience."

In Turin, that was a bus ride up the switchbacks in the Alps, when the end of your bus hung over a precipice and the driver thought nothing of turning 180 degrees with a swing of the wheel.

In Vancouver, that was the bus ride up to Whistler, with the bay glistening on your left and the mountains rising like CGI creations on your right.

In London, I had seen Tower Bridge and the Tower of London and the Thames, but hadn't made it to Piccadilly Circus, Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park or Harrods.

Then I got on a bus Monday morning on a beautiful London day, found myself alone, and got a tour of all of the above from the driver. He even stopped so we could take a picture of the Buckingham Palace Guards marching band.

London is a spectacular city. Every Olympics has its controversies and logistical problems. Here, they'e outraged over all the empty corporate seats, and they should be - plenty of Londoners would kill for tickets others aren't using.

But I love being in a city of this size and beauty.