Not an early start to our first full day today after the mammoth journey to get here. We didn’t leave the apartment till mid morning.
Initially planned to go to Camden Market from the closest station (Barbican) but it was closed (as were all stations on the circle line) so walked the opposite direction to St Paul’s station. Walking that way I was able to snap the picture above of St Pauls.
Somewhat a blessing in disguise having to detour as we passed “Postman’s Park” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postman%27s_Park which has lots of memorials dedicated to “heroic self sacrifice” where people died in the heroic act of saving someone else from death. Lots of interesting history in this tiny pocket of London, and we just stumbled across it (we had known it existed, thought it would be interesting, but hadn’t actually planned on visiting it)
Next stop was Camden Market. Normally I’d go out of my way to avoid “markets” but this one is well worth the visit. It has plenty of the normal market dross, but also lots of interesting stuff too. If you are after a T-shirt with witty comments, this is the place to come. There are also a lot of local photographers who sell their artwork, we picked up this awesome little picture that combines Lego with London photography.
Camden also has my favourite burger joint (Baba G’s Bhangra Burger), a fantastic Indian / western fusion. It’s amazing, if you come here seek them out. They used to operate out of a food truck but they now have a proper restaurant. They have other outlets in London too.
I got my coffee fix out a Camden too. Initial reconnaissance of this coffee joint indicates it should be good, it had a queue and Italian barista. Was a little disappointed though, ended up too hot and slightly burnt. Might have more luck tomorrow.
All the rage out here at the moment are these “Bubble Waffles”, i expect we will try one sometime before we leave London.
If you come here to Camden on a weekend, expect crowds, the place is pumping, even on a slightly wet day. When we finished here we had to queue on the street for a few minutes to get back in the tube station
This particular weekend in London had “Open House London” where lots of interesting buildings are open to the public, and they only offer it once per year. Scotland Yard were open to tours but you has to submit a ballot entry since it was so popular. Unfortunately I misssd out on that one. The Gherkin, my favourite London building was not on the open list this year. Australia house, which would be cool to visit for obvious reasons, also has an ancient drinking well dating back to Roman times in its basement and an amazing marble floor that’s been featured in Harry Potter (Gringotts Bank). I also missed out on the ticket allocation to that. Check out their website here https://openhouselondon.org.uk
Central London was closed to traffic in some key areas today and bike rental was free. All in all a great day to be out and about in London.
In the afternoon we caught up with a friend of mine who now works out of the Bank’s London office. Josh took us to this great hotel in SoHo where we spent a few hours.
(http://www.deanstreettownhouse.com)
Dinner was at the Nags Head in Covent Garden. It’s becoming a tradition that we have Sunday dinner here when in London. The other great thing it’s that Covent Garden is on the Piccadilly Tube line, and my inner 14 year old never tires of the train to Cockfosters.
Sharon and Emma are coming here later in the week
It's all about the coffee 