Entered on 25 August 2003 at 8:57 a.m..
Sunday in London
Yesterday I was down in London running some errands and enjoying the day. First off I needed to go down to London with my passport to buy my inter-rail pass (which is only open to European residents), and since I've been here for almost 2 years it means that I qualify. But I also wanted to attend a service at St. Pauls to hear the chior and the organ. As an added bonus, the Notting Hill carnival is also on this weekend.
So I set off yesterday morning bound for London. The trip down was uneventful and I got to the cathedral in plenty of time. St. Pauls is currently going through a major cleaning project to scrub each interior stone. This mean that there was quite a bit of scaffolding up, but the cathedral is still awe-inspiring. The service was pretty good, and I knew 2 of the 4 song tunes.
That ended at about 1pm and I set off in search of lunch. Now I had a lunch budget of �2 (or the eqivalent of $3.50) so I wasn't too confident I could meet that budget. But what to my wondering eyes did appear but a Marks & Spenser's Insta-grocery. Aimed at the yuppie and the tourist. Basically the whole place was packed with ready meals and wine. The great thing was that they were cheap and relatively healthy. There were tons of different types of salads, yougurt, sandwiches, drinks and very few chips. I managed to get a tuna sandwich and a yogurt for �1.95. Which made my very happy. However I now had to find a place to sit down and eat.
I decided to continue to walk towards my tube stop (HOLBORN) which took me west from the Cathedral down Ludgate Hill. I turned left towards the river in hopes of finding benches, and sure enough found some unused pic-nic tables outside a closed pub. The walk took me less than 3 minutes. When I was done I headed back to Ludgate Hill and continued down it, where it became Fleet Street. After what I calculate must have been about 5 minutes I had seen 5 different Starbucks, and at least as many competitors. I continued my walk until I passed the Royal Courts of Justice (which look like they were inspired by either a cathedral or Cinderella's castle), at which point I used Chancellry lane to cut through to High Holborn Stree. At this point I had probably been walking for about 15 minutes total since leaving St. Pauls and I had passed 8 Starbucks. Now the reason for this is quite clear to me as Fleet Street is where the reporters, lawyers, and some financial stuff is all located. To many people with too much money and not enough caffiene to go around.
Just so you can understand how many I passed I've gone on their homepage and downloaded this image of where all the stores are. Can you tell what path I took?
So then I made it to Holborn station only passing one more Starbucks at the top of Chancellery Lane and headed over to the STA where I bought my inter-rail pass.
Next I headed down to the Notting Hill carnival. Very interesting. It reminded my of a very loud version of the Poquoson Christmas Parade. OK, so the costumes were better, but I was watching the parade near the end, and no matter where you go in the world children get tired of wearing costumes. Plus there is this annoying habit of having 2 moms/helpers for every 3 children/costumed participants. So by the time they passed me the moms/helpers were so intermingled witht he participants that the effect wasn't that good. Also most of the people who passed me were eating something, which I found funny.
So I stayed for about an hour and then headed out of there having inhaled enough fumes of various sorts to last me another year. My ears are still recovering. There were points when I had to remind myself to breath when I wanted to, not with the base. My favorite float was the one with the steel drummers. They were really good.
The other mystery of the day was the Krispy Kreme doughnuts box that I saw someone carry past me. Had I been faster I would have asked them where they got it from, but it didn't register until they were too far away to grab. Sigh.