Cassie, Michaele and I woke up and gathered in the courtyard at 9:00 to meet to go to Camden Town – a huge marketplace in northern London. Chris was also supposed to meet us, but after waiting for 5 minutes we threw some pebbles against his window, the blinds rolled up slightly, and his hand appeared holding the number one, signalling… “Just a minute.” After 30 minutes, Chris finally was ready and came down into the courtyard; we’ve decided that next time we will just tell him that we are meeting at 8:30.
We headed to Southbury station to find that it was closed for the weekend, not an uncommon occurrence. London transport likes to do all of its maintenance work on the weekends, and usually on multiple stations, and usually on the ones surrounding our campus so it seems. Our only choice was to hop on a bus and ride it to Wood Green, an underground station that was about 50 minutes away. After a lengthy ride, we arrived and made our way to the crowded market of Camden Town.
Camden town is absolutely crazy. Imagine about 500 different booths, stores and food places in a small area and you will get an idea. Many of them are small tent booths, but some are built into an old bridge that runs through the market, making small catacombs of stores that are tucked away. The food section is incredible as well. You can get African food, Mexican food, Chinese food, Arabian food and Indian food. The food vendors are quite aggressive when it comes to promoting their meals, If they see your eyes glance their food they will yell out, “Hey you! Come have some rice!” It was hard to decide between seafood fried rice or oriental chicken, I went for the chicken and chow mien lunch.
The most unusual clothing store at Camden was called Cyber Dog – a gigantic store that sells clothing that looks like it came straight out of the future. T-shirts with video screens in them, space boots and everything cyber is in this shop. Check out their Web site to see what I’m talking about, its truly out of this world. http://www.cyberdog.net/
It was also really incredible because we kept running into people that we knew. I saw my flatmate Stephanie, we also saw Megan, another CSU student, and Chris saw someone who went to his university in Spain – all in Camden Town, it was all very ironic; I mean, we are in London, not in some small village, kind of mind boggling.
After a full day of going into practically every store, we were ready to head home with the rest of the crowds. Finding our way home was not as difficult as the way there; we made it to Liverpool station and were ready to catch our train back home, but realized that the station was closed. The National Rail was operating a replacement bus service and we were all impressed when a huge coach pulled up inside the beautiful Liverpool station to take us home. We were practically the only ones on the bus, and we reclined the seats all the way back, almost horizontal, and enjoyed a nice ride through the now dark, rainy streets of London.
Michele Chris and I decided to make the most of our all day travel card and grabbed the bus back into London to see the lights. We rode the tube to Charing Cross, a stop that is directly under Trafalgar Square, and a nice walk to the Thames embankment. Thankfully it had stopped raining, and it was beautiful as always walking along the bridge, one side facing St. Paul’s Cathedral and the other facing the London Eye and the House of Parliament and Big Ben. After walking under the London Eye and heading back to Embankment station, we walked up to Leicester Square (pronounced Lester Square) and found a small café to grab something to drink. We had yet to really experience how expensive of a city London is until our short time at the café. To give you an idea, a slice of cake at the café was £5.00, which is equivalent to $10.00! We estimated that the entire cake was worth $120.00 and there were 16 cakes in the display case, making the entire lot worth $1,920 – and this wasn’t Harrods, or anything special, it was just a small café in the heart of London. Chris ordered a latte, which was £4.00 and when it arrived he exclaimed, “I’m not a Tiny Toon!” In his infamous Spanish accent, remarking about the ridiculously small size of the mug. We headed home after a long and memorable day, looking forward to sleeping in late on Sunday morning.
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