Day 11 - 6/1/2012
So luckily I went to bed early on Thursday because I had another 9am on Friday due to the Bank Holidays that are occurring on Monday and Tuesday next week. After class was over I realized I had basically a mid term break since I would not have class again until the following Friday. We decided Friday night to go on the Camden Pub Crawl. I've already sorta described the neighborhood of Camden but as a refresher its a casual young person neighborhood in North London with lots of fun little pubs. It's similar to the neighborhood I live in or the more famous Greenwich Village in New York City. The pub crawl was recommended to me by one of the grad RA who is now is on his second trip to London.
The pub crawl was an absolute blast. Although it was quite crazy by the end it was a great little trip along 4 different pubs and 2 clubs before ending in this venue called Koko. Koko is similar to a House of Blues in the United States. It's an antique theater with live music playing and was a great place to end up. I only managed to take one picture along the way but it was of the venue Koko.
Picture didn't come out that well since it was sorta dark but needless to say it was quite fun.
Day 12 - 6/2/2012
I woke up on the Saturday of the Jubilee weekend and decided that I was going to be productive. A few of the other people on my floor gathered together and we decided to go exploring and walk somewhere in London. One of the girls on my floor had gotten wind of a international food festival down on the south shore of the Thames so we went down there. As we got across the river it seemed there was nothing going on. Disappointed we walked around the Queen's Event Center and found ourselves in one of the most wonderful places on earth. For the first time I'd gained an appreciation that London is truly an international city. Before us was food from all around the world. We had churros and chorizo's from Spain, Polish sausages and pork, Lebanese falafel and baklava, Italian pasta, Ethiopian pasta, Austrian cheese dumplings, Malaysian, Korean, everything you can think of, and finally the British with their beer. We were all soon overwhelmed with the smells and sounds of the different people calling in people to try their various foods. I was soon lured in to try a Spanish flat bread chicken chorizo. I've always been under the impression that chorizos were sausage but they called them chicken and I trust their knowledge better than mine. The way they prepared it was in a flat bread roll-up with a combination of cheeses, vegetables, and spices. Its hard to describe the taste but it was almost sweet and sour and was absolutely delicious. I snapped a picture of the roll-up before I made it disappear rather quickly.
Afterward I decided that although my Spanish roll-up was quite filling I needed to sample more of the delicious food available to me. I found myself wishing that they had the Taste of Chicago style taste portions available but unfortunately they only sold food in full meal style. After my roll-up I was craving something sweet. One of the girls with me convinced me to try Baklava from the Lebanese vendor. I've never had baklava before and though I'm familiar with the word really had no idea what I was in for. I found what now might be one of my favorite deserts ever. The flavors they had were mostly various nuts; pistachio, almond, cashew, etc. Pistachio is one of my favorite flavors of anything and in baklava it was no exception. The desert was absolutely delicious and I snapped a few pictures of the pastries? for lack of a better word.
I don't know why some of the pictures are upside down but I can't seem to fix them so oh well. After the baklava I tried one more thing, cheese dumplings from the Austrian vendor. I forgot to take a picture, probably because I ate them so fast because they were so good. Can't emphasize how incredible this festival was and definitely plan to come back. Afterward we decided we all needed to walk off some of the food we'd ate so we walked all the way back to South Kensington. I don't have time to go into details but I snapped a ton of pictures and notable places we passed include Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace, and Harrod's (which I found out is about 5 blocks from my flat). Here are the pictures.
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| Trafalgar Square |
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| Again |
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| Again |
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| Road to the Palace |
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| Again |
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| Buckingham Palace |
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| Again |
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| George VII? Monument... forget |
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| Harrod's |
Unfortunately we couldn't get that close to Buckingham Palace because they were setting up for the BBC concert on Tuesday but I definitely plan to go back. Sorry for the delay in updating its been a very busy weekend. I will try to write and post more pictures soon.
Cheers,
Mickey
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