Camden and Lord's

Fueled by our breakfast of Shreddies and British strawberries, we took the Tube to Camden to start what would be a big day.

We arrived in Camden while the market stallholders were getting set up, so there was a buzz, but not yet any trinkets to buy. After coffee in a gallery cafe that featured cool graffiti art, we explored Camden in the early morning (to be fair, it's more of an afternoon/evening place for future reference). Camden sits on Regent's Canal and has many markets, a lock and a bohemian vibe. We wandered around, crossing the cobblestone bridge (designed for barge horse hooves to be able to get grip, not human feet) to more markets. We came across a stall that just sold coasters and, of course, you can never have enough coasters.

Armed with our new coasters and Adrian in his new holiday hat, we set off down the canal on foot towards Regent's Park, passing canal boats and graffiti adorned walls. It was a very different perspective of London to yesterday. We emerged at Regent's Park, a massive green space full of playing fields, walking trails and geese.

In what is emerging to be a theme, we took the long route through the park to the other side, and then on to the main event for the day, a tour of the home of cricket! (Non-cricket tragics, feel free to skip the next bit.)

Our Lord's tour was the only thing we prebooked for London (that does not involve food) and it did not disappoint from the first moment when we were welcomed by THE Urn. The tour was led by Tony, a sprightly octogenarian who regaled us of his stories of his 50-year association with the ground with humour and incredible factual accuracy. Tony loves his cricket. Tony took us to the Long Room (set for a banquet we weren't invited to. Rude.), the player dressing rooms (tiny but historic), and the Media Centre (very modern by contrast). We finished with a late lunch at Lord's Tavern of delicious fish and chips (which we sensibly only ate half of because we had dinner reservations in 4 hours).

We made the call to walk back to the apartment, despite having been walking since 9am. Adrian channelled his inner London commuter, darting through the traffic and down back roads while I struggled to keep up. We hauled ourselves up our treacherous staircase after 4pm, having walked about 12kms all up.

Dinner tonight was the first of our pre-booked restaurants - Mowgli, an Indian restaurant across the road from our apartment and chosen because it is owned by Nisha Katona, judge on one of our favourite shows, Great British Menu. Mowgli serves Indian street food and the menu is quite different to what we experience in Australia. We nearly didn't eat there because they tried to seat us at a table with swings for seats. No. Needless to say, we got a table with actual seats and had a delicious meal.

Declaring tomorrow would be a walking-lite day, we crashed into bed, tired but happy.Read more