No one is thronging anything out in Blighty.
New Orleans, home to fewer than 400,000 people, has always been a tourist town, and locals have long complained that throngs of out-of-towners endanger the city's authenticity.
In one of the biggest banks in the centre of Athens a clerk is explaining how his savers have been thronging to pull out their cash.
The sun was out and shoppers thronged the Marienplatz, sporting midwinter tans from Majorca and the Canary Islands.
We went to the White Party, the Black Party, the Jungle Party, and the Foam Party, but the real party was always out in the thronged streets.
A little while later the church doors opened, the colorful throng streamed out, said their goodbyes and, looking straight ahead, walked purposefully toward their cars.
On Fridays, it's in Chatham, the sophisticated haven at the cape's elbow, where as many as 6,000 people converge on Kate Gould Park on Main Street for a musical slice of Americana at 8 p.m. From the gazebo, the town's brass band, its players in uniforms right out of "The Music Man," serenades the throng spread out on beach blankets and lawn chairs with marches, waltzes and folk ditties.
A throng turned out and sat in respectful silence at its finish.
Another interesting part of proceedings is the planning of an assault on Falcone's club before the quick time events begin, you essentially draw a path of carnage through the throng, taking out goons as you go, and the game then asks you to act accordingly.
A dozen years since, the grotesque singularity of the terrorist attacks continues to haunt the crowded streets and thronged squares - death came winging out of a clear-blue sky, borne on wings not demonic but prosaic.
