Thought it was about time I added the final exciting days. Day 4 started a bit later than i’d hoped but it was a saturday and we didn’t really have anything planned so wasn’t that big a deal. Got a bagel from the station (oh how i miss so much tasty food on my door step) and headed off to get on Thames “cruise”.
Decided to stay on the boat all the way to Greenwich to see as much as was available from the Thames in one go and then went for a mooch to see what the town of time had to offer.
First was a big market with all sorts of food available. It was a tough choice picking lunch but the winner was a giant roast beef and cheddar sandwich. Partly because it was the first thing I saw, partly because seeing a huge melted lump of cheddar was just amazing as they rotated its holder and dripped it onto the sandwich :D Missus opted for a goat stew, she’s weird and likes to eat goat.
After finding a tree to sit under in Greenwich park to eat our lunch we trekked up the steep steep hill to see what all the time lark was about. They have a red ball on a stick that sits on top of the building, 5 minutes before each hour the ball rises and then on the hour the ball drops. I have no idea why they decided this is what should happen but who doesn’t love a big red ball.
Being the former ruler of the world they also decided the line where east meets west. People we queueing up to have their picture taken infront of a weird shape of metal (i did take a picture of it, just not with us in it) which was odd.
When we were heading back down the hill there was someone singing (and amped) at Queen’s House, seemingly named as a former royal residence. Turned out there was a wedding happening and some nice loud woman was on one side of the wall shouting it was someone she knows from Hong Kong’s wedding and shes amazed that she hangs around with such fancy people as she’s usually on the other side looking in.
What struck me as odd, about the wedding itself, is that Queens House is a public building and anyone can walk through the gates and mill about, as many people were. So why anyone would want to have a wedding there, and i imagine pay a substantial amount to do so, baffles me. Also possibly highlights the intelligence of the woman, who on numerous occasions has been free to walk through to the other side if she so wished (or realised).
Walking around a bit more of Greenwich we discovered a shop i think called Shake It which offered 101 flavours of milkshake. These were basically every chocolate bar, biscuit or fruit that existed and were made by blending said “flavour” with some ice cream. The end result is made of win. I had a Bourbon Biscuit flavour, which much like the Biscuits was amazingly delicious and Girl Sam had a Lion Bar shake.
Went back to the boat and headed to tower pier which i imagine is named for being by the Tower of London. There was little else there and that seemed needlessly expensive so we went to wetherspoons for cheap beer and free wifi :) which helped me upload some more snaps before annoyingly hitting the free Flickr limit (since removed as i paid for it, so i’ll have to start taking photos i guess, yay an almost excuse to buy an SLR).
In spoons a random old man came up to me and asked if id take a picture of him and his friends. He handed me his camera and then did nothing,for quite some time. I asked him if he wanted to be in the picture at which point he realised he should probably go and sit with his friends. I took the picture, he was far too happy, offered to by me a drink. That was nice, opted to be charitable though, what with it not being even remotely worth a drink.
Don’t think anything else happened that day, at all. Headed back to the hotel and did a big read of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Toodles.
Figured i’d stick with random use of words and numbers in the titles and switch back to numbers.
Today was another late start but only had one thing to do, Camden. This meant breakfast and dinner in one go, the best way to do it, Full English. As the sign that led us there claimed “Best breakfast in London”. I have to agree, better may be on offer but it was certainly the best breakfast i had on the trip ;) plate was giant and portions were plentiful.
After becoming more functional with some food and coffee in us we trekked around the markets looking at everything on offer. For those that haven’t been to Camden it’s basically just a collection of markets (that’s plural markets, not market stalls). Most of them just sell similar awesome T-shirts, but they are awesome, so we forgive them.
Throughout my trip to London my feet had been hurting as a result of constant walking in converse-esque shoes. While generally they are comfortable, they are essentially just slabs of rubber on the soles of your feet and not well suited for massive walking. As much as i’d like to just blame the fact they are Primarni at £3 a pair, ive suffered similarly after long walks in my genuine Converse too, besides much <3 for Primark.
Anyway back to the point, my feet hurting for 4 days already led me to want some trainers. A quick search on my phone suggested a place in Camden called Trainerd which specialises in classic trainers. Sounded pretty win so we trekked around looking for it. After much fail trekking we came to the conclusion that it has since closed down :( I’m now in the process of customizing some Adidas instead, as soon as i’ve decided on colour scheme and text they’ll be mine! Best i can come up with for text at the moment is this very blog. So if that happens they’ll definately be get posted up here.
We stumbled across 2 very large robots stood outside one shop, Cyberdog. Intrigued we went inside to find it had 2 dancers in the first area of the store and lots of circuit board based accessories. The rest was cyber clothing which fit with the store name. It was enormous and they had a DJ raving the place up. Definately felt like the nightclub they all hang out in in the film Hackers. This is awesome! They randomly had an over 18s only section, which, if it wasn’t for the fact it had a pole dancer in it seemed pretty tame. This is where cyber face accessories existed and cyber goggles and masks. Pretty weird. I dare say annoying if you are a minor and wanting these cyber accessories. Unable to purchase them until you are 18 just because they decided the shop needed a pole dancer. Ah well, pole dancers are good.
Time for snacks. Camden is the best place for snacks entirely thanks to Chin Chin Labs ice cream shop (pictured above). This is truly geek food. You tell the scientist your flavour choice, he pours the flavour in from a bottle and then dons his safety glasses and gloves. He then picks up his metal cup, fills it with liquid nitrogen and adds it to the mixer. This quickly makes the liquid flavour become ice cream. Win. He then hands over to his glamorous assistant who offers a variety of sauces and sprinkles. I played it safe with chocolate put Sam picked the weekly special which was Lychees and Rose Water. Freakishly it did taste exactly like Lychees.
Previous special flavours have included Peanut Butter and Jelly with Bacon sprinkles!!!! Sad i missed that one. I will upload a video of him making the ice cream at some point, I want to see if i can make it less annoying to watch, being so close to him I was changing orientation from portrait to landscape throughout and don’t want people to have to keep moving their heads :)
Finally we got some haggling on thanks to Sam and she picked up some bargain clothes at my expense, so thanks to her for making them cheap :D
Went to Leicester Square for our final meal, deciding on Bella Italia which unfortunately had a waitress of fail, aside from being very slow and distracted she also managed to not tell the kitchen about our starters. We made up for this by having a second ice cream treat of the day with dessert at Haagan Daaz restaurant.
That was pretty much the end of the trip so back to my usual less eventful life. No more walls of text.
