LONDON -- As President Bush departed Friday following a state visit marked by raucous street protests and vitriol against US foreign policy, a lot of the American expatriates who live in this city breathed a sigh of relief.

It wasn't just about the traffic flow improving.

It was bad during Vietnam. . . . But in the last year or so it is has gotten very bad. I have just never seen so much anger at America, or more precisely so much anger against an American president. People here just hate Bush. He embodies everything they hate about America: its destruction of the environment, globalization, arrogance, parochialism, militancy..

Linda Starkey, 60, who was born in California

In taxis and pubs, at bus stops and office water coolers, and on strolls in the park with the kids, Americans living in European capitals complain that their accent often makes them targets of excoriation for their president and his policies in the post Sept. 11 era.

The Bush visit fostered massive street demonstrations that culminated in toppling an effigy of Bush in Trafalgar Square and the London Mayor Ken Livingstone denouncing Bush as "the greatest threat to life on this planet." All that merely exacerbated the tension for Americans over here.

Many Americans say the low-level hostility is always there, creeping just beneath any daily conversation, whether it's around a dinner table with friends or a chance encounter with a stranger.

"It is so exhausting," said Ellen McHale, 39, who hails from South Boston and lives in London with her son and husband, who owns a software business.

"You can't get into a taxi without having to sit through a political diatribe. A lot of the minicab drivers are Afghanis. They are more polite. They appreciate us getting rid of the Taliban but they don't like George Bush. They think he wants to be president of the world," she said.

"The worst is the licensed black taxis with the British drivers. They are really in your face. I find myself just putting my eyes down and not engaging, because it gets really tiring. The American bashing is just everywhere," McHale added.

The warm sympathy for Americans that came in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks turned cold slightly more than a year ago, when many Europeans believe Bush defied the United Nations and world opinion to pursue a unilateral and unjust war in Iraq. The ire is stirred by a widely held view of Bush as a dangerous and dim-witted cowboy.

At rallies and in editorials, the point is often made that Europeans oppose Bush, not America. But day-to-day encounters are less subtle, and often collapse into a kind of guilt by association.

Americans interviewed here say that the verbal offensives -- sometimes hostile, sometimes polite but derogatory -- come regardless of their politics, and that the dynamic often prompts a recalibration of where they themselves stand politically.

As a result, some left-leaning Americans say they find themselves defending the system that elected Bush and the ideals for which they say he stands.

Some more conservative Americans are confronted with arguments that prod them to grudgingly concede that Bush's unilateral pronouncements have indeed alienated long-time allies.

Others say the anti-Americanism deepens convictions already held, and they find themselves publicly articulating their views as if they were US diplomats.

But for the 35,000 Americans with work visas in London, their families, and the tens of thousands more who work and study throughout the United Kingdom, the dialogue never stops.

"The whole thing drives me crazy. I would never vote for Bush. I am a lifelong Democrat and I think Bush has done great damage to our county's economy. But over here I sometimes find myself defending the guy, or at least defending the process that elected him," said Tim Russo, 36, a political consultant from Ohio who has lived in London for many years.

"You find yourself going into pubs and trying not to talk too loudly because the second you do heads turn and everyone wants to have a go at you," he said.

Linda Starkey, 60, who was born in California and has lived in London for half a century, offered a historical view of the British opinion of Americans. She came to London when her father, a Hollywood movie director, was blacklisted for his leftist views during the McCarthy era.

She said that when she arrived as a young girl in the mid 1950s, she remembered people cursing her American accent on buses. There was a raw feeling in the aftermath of World War II that the United States had joined the fight against Germany too late, and she remembered one man took her by the hand to show her rubble from the German Blitz and said, "This did not have to happen."

"There was anger for sure back then," she said. "And it was bad during Vietnam. . . . But in the last year or so it is has gotten very bad. I have just never seen so much anger at America, or more precisely so much anger against an American president. People here just hate Bush. He embodies everything they hate about America: its destruction of the environment, globalization, arrogance, parochialism, militancy."

And even though she has inherited the leftist views of her parents, Starkey said, "These days I always end up defending America. I believe in the Constitution."

Christine Buckley, 24, from New York, arrived in London six months ago after spending two years in the Peace Corps in a small village in Western Morocco. She was there on Sept. 11 and remembered how the Muslim villagers hugged her and implored her to understand, "The people who did that were not Muslim."

Since then, in Morocco, in travels across Europe, and now in London, she said, she has felt that sympathy for America dissipate into anger against America.

"It wasn't until Iraq that things got really ugly. That is when people saw America as unilateral, as defying the UN and the world opinion," she said.

"I didn't vote for Bush, but I find myself sick and tired of telling people that. And I find myself more and more becoming a kind of advocate for America. Europeans are always scolding us as parochial, but the same is true of them. They have very little understanding of America. I am always surprised that they don't know that our democracy is about clashing opinions. You end up asking yourself, `Don't they know democracy is always messy?' "

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