What I did in London

So, I'm back! I went to London and now I'm home.

Things I learned/remembered:
• central heating is a wonderful thing - the house I was staying in didn't have any, and it was cold cold cold!
• proper public transport is lovely, especially trains - I was staying in the miserable godforsaken way-out area of Croydon (don't move there if you can help it!) and yet it only took about half an hour by train to reach civilisation, err... Victoria station I mean.
• travelling by yourself is lonely - everybody else seems to travel in pairs and groups.
• if your friend is a miserable anti-social hermit, he will not change his ways for you, no matter how far you travelled to see him.

Places I visited/ Things I did:
• I meandered around the centre of London, were I visited art galleries, bought books both second-hand (Dylan Thomas' collected poems and a book on how to watercolour) and new (Ursula LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness).


• I went to Covent Garden where I bought shampoos 1, 2 and face cream from Lush and and looked at shoes (and out of all the strange original shoes I saw, I ended up buying these gorgeous campers that I'm sure I could have found in Athens too).


• I visited Camden Town, curious about the renovations to the stables. What a confusing warren they've turned them into! Unfortunately Camden is not nearly as exciting anymore as I remembered it being. I did end up getting more second hand books (Gabriel Garcia Marquez's A Hundred Years of Solitude and Tom Wolfe's From Our House to Bauhaus - both books I've read but didn't have) and some second hand clothes (especially a pink 70s summer dress I plan on wearing once it gets hot enough).

• I checked out the new Darwin Centre in one of my favourite museums in London - the Natural History Museum. If you're even in London, you should definitely visit it. The Darwin Centre is an ultra modern extension to the beautiful old Victorian musem.


• I went to the theatre. My annoying friend turned down all the plays I proposed and in the end we compromised with Private Lives. You know, the one with Kim Katrall in. It turned out rather funny and amusing - it was Noel Coward after all - but all in all rather average.

• I dragged my unsociable friend to the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew. Even though it was cold and none of the flowers were in bloom, it was lovely. We spent hours walking around the huge grounds and visiting the hot and humid greenhouses. We ended up sitting on a bench in the gardens eating chocolate fudge cake out of a box with plastic spoons (don't even ask!).


• The last day I enticed my stay-at-home friend to visit the Horniman Museum with me. With a name like that, how could he refuse? It's a so-so Anthropological museum with gardens and a rather good cafeteria/restaurant.


And then, after I spent all my money, I took the plane back home to Athens, and here I am!