Day 87: Camden Markets

Last full day in London! First step though was to move out of our current apartment, and move into a different place near King's Cross station. Originally we had only booked this place until the 12th, but decided to extend our stay in London for two nights. But annoyingly, it was only available for the first of those two nights, so we just booked a small flat near King's Cross for the last night as our rental car office was nearby.

All went smoothly with checking out, Ubering over to the new place and getting in. It was a little odd though, since it was clearly someone's house but they weren't around to greet us (a key was hidden in a lockbox nearby). Felt strange.

We dropped our bags and headed out for the day to Camden Markets, a London institution. This is where a lot of London's counter-culture scene used to happen, though I imagine these days it's way overpriced for that type of thing to still exist. We had a good wander around looking at all the market stalls, though I'd say more than half were just selling tourist tat (I Heart London shirts, Union Jack fridge magnets, Keep Calm and <witticism> prints, Banksy copies etc). Not a whole lot of interesting stuff around, though we managed to find a few things.

Shandos ended up buying a new handbag as her current one was getting grubby and starting to fall apart. I didn't buy anything aside from lunch, where we had mixed Thai for 5 pounds a box - decent value. Also had a nitrogen ice-cream sandwich which was excellent! Not particularly healthy, or ice-cream weather for that matter, but still good nonetheless. More wandering and then a pint at one of the bars there before we headed back to our apartment to chill.

In the evening we headed out to Southbank for dinner with another old friend - James, my former flatmate who'd moved over here with his wife a couple of years prior. We had a tapas meal at a place near Borough Markets (since we haven't had enough tapas lately!); as usual the food was good and quite authentic, but very expensive for what you get. Tapas in Spain works because the price is based on the serving size, ie the tapas size is 1/3rd the food at 1/3rd the price. Whereas in western countries, the tapas size is 1/3rd the food at 3/4ths the price. Annoying!

After dinner we had a good walk with them along the south bank of the Thames, popping into some random festival where we grabbed a waffle for dessert. They also took us to the "smelly tunnel" which is one of the authorised graffiti sites in London. A few people spraying up even though it was 10pm or so, and lots of good stuff to check out here!

Finally they walked us back to Waterloo station near their apartment where we said our goodbyes and parted, us on the Tube back to King's Cross and them home. Another long day for our last one in London, very appropriate! I think Shandos fell asleep within about 20 seconds of hitting the pillow.Read more