Hi, I'm Matthew 👋

I'm a Software Developer from New Zealand

2010 Trip: London Day 2

3 minutes
July 14, 2010

13th June 2010

Sarah Moore (UCanDancer) and I met up at the Lucky 7 American diner, in an obscure neighbourhood in the NW of London. However, the meeting hampered by two things - firstly, my watch had decided to just change time by an hour, so I was an hour early. When the diner was still closed, I was little surprised… It took me a while to figure it out!

Additionally, I hadn’t read the chat conversation closely enough. I assumed we were meeting at the diner, and Sarah assumed we were meeting at a nearby station. But, we both got there eventually. The food was great and they did all the great things (and more) that one would expect and their smoothies were exceptional. The walls were covered with slightly tongue and cheek patriotic posters. A really cool place.

Sarah and I chatted for a while and then we both headed to the British Museum, we wandered around one of the exhibits on clocks and medieval technology, we looked at some of the galleries of finds within Britain. One of the noticeable things about the British museum is that they don’t just display things because they have them, they often display things that don’t look particularly interesting at first glance because they have an interesting back story or the illustrate an important historical point. When we were all history-ed out, we grabbed a drink and Sarah headed off to do important things.

I stayed at the gallery and went to an exhibition of pencil sketches by Renaissance masters. While it concentrated rather too heavily on the decorative rather than the practical, the techniques used were very interesting. The use of different grades and shades, different paper materials and the changes in artistic technique. Some of the images were also rather beautiful (he says, as an afterthought).

After this, I walked north to Campden Town. Specifically, as a Sunday afternoon, this is the location of the Campden Markets (for there are several). My first stop, however, was a little vegetarian restaurant overlooking the canal which served rather good salad which I grazed while people watching.

The Campden Markets are fairly huge and crowded and I won’t try and describe everything, but some cool things were: food stalls that had scooters into seats for guests to overlook the canal, one area full of giant statues of horses, and a stall dedicated to the high tech party clothing - with glow in the dark/illuminated shirts, gadgets, toys, and cool bits and bobs. This shop was especially awesome as the walls were covered with illuminated android mannequins.

In addition, you could probably find anything else that you wanted there - sections of art, clothing, African products, food, antiques. Certain areas were overtly touristy, but this was escapable. After I had had enough, I walked to Sarah’s place quite close by.

After visiting a local pub to try some of the local (slightly warm) boutique beer we headed back to her flat. I was pampered with Pimm’s with fresh citrus and strawberries, while her flatmate and her made dinner. Sarah is a near eminent foodie and she made a recent favourite of hers - chilli herb pancakes with enriched butter and a delicious salad. A light and totally flavoursome dish. We spent the evening playing Carcassonne. I had a great time!