London

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So we showed up in London and Paul remembered that he has a cousin that lives here. He sent him a message just after we got into the city, and by noon we had plans to go over to his flat for dinner.

We wandered around during the day on Sunday, checked out Camden Market which is just up the street from our hostel... a pretty interesting place. While we were at it, we found a shop called Cyberdog... the decor in the store was quite elaborate. Unfortunately they didn't allow photos. Maybe I can find some on teh internets. As we were walking past some stalls, Paul also recognized some artwork that one of the artists at his office had sent out as something interesting to look at that he'd found on the internet earlier in the week. It turns out that the artist is from London, and we had a bit of a chat with him about the pretty unlikely coincidence of running across him completely by accident. He was actually quite excited that someone from outside london was looking at his work.

In the afternoon, we wondered over to Hyde park to listen to the nutbars in Speaker's Corner. There were a couple that were definitely pretty crazy. One felt that people should not work, because doing so is unnatural. I'm not sure how well that stacks up as an economic strategy, but I guess it would sort out the unemployment problem. Another guy had taken it upon himself to point out to everyone that they are going to hell for two reasons. The first one was because we have apparently never "paid the rent" on the bodies we inhabit. The second one was apparently that nobody but him believes in the God that he believes in. He didn't exactly provide any details about this God that we are in trouble for not believing in (despite several people asking him to) but he did let us know that his God had spoken to him personally and had told him that he was going to live forever. I guess that's why he has time to stand outside warning people that they are going to hell without telling them what they should do about it.

So we went over for dinner at Paul's cousin's place and it turned out that Paul's aunt and uncle were also in town from Canada. After dinner they brought out the old family photos that the uncle had been collecting. So there I was less than 24 hours after arriving in London looking at Paul's baby photos. Didn't see that one coming.

We were woken up early on Saturday morning (about 5:30) by a guy outside shouting "Strawberries!" every 30 seconds or so. It *did* take us about an hour to figure out what he was saying, though, due to the way he was saying it. He had a pretty inpenetrable accent, and was pronouncing the word something like "strawbreeze" with very heavy emphasis on the first syllable. Combined with the fact that he was bellowing loud enough to be heard for about a kilometer. It did lead to a pretty fun "what is that guy saying" guessing game. Anyway, it turned out that he was selling strawberries (2 pints for a pound) but by the time we eventually got outside he had sold out of them. We think. He certainly didn't have any left. Maybe he never did and was just messing with people.

We got pretty good coverage on Monday of the essential london sights - Big Ben, houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar square, Piccadilly Circus and St. Paul's. We even spotted a Spar that had a Tim Horton's in it. We went for a late lunch at an old pub (allegedly re-built in the 1600s -- not sure when it was originally "built") called "Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese" (seriously). It was really excellent.

Monday night we went on the Camden pub crawl which conveniently started and ended at the pub that's downstairs from our hostel. Had quite a few pints at quite a few pubs. Ended up meeting a couple from Boston that were pretty cool, and it turns out they're on the same train as us to Paris. We've arranged to meet for a beer (or a wine or whatever) in Paris one night.

Also awesome: the room we're staying in at the hostel has 8 beds. Besides us, there's a guy from Winnipeg, a guy from Vancouver and four guys from Calgary. I sure have met a lot of people from Canada while I've been in London 😊

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