London 2010.

Because I arrived in London so early on Monday, I decided to take a nice, long walk through Chelsea. I strolled the back streets, checking out the Flemish style houses and happened upon the home of the Chelsea Pensioners. I even saw a Chelsea Pensioner wandering around! Oh, if only S were with me. He would see the delight in this. I made my way back to the King's Road (which is full of lovely shopping) and strolled all the way to Stamford Bridge. When we were last at the Bridge, we were attending a match so it was too busy to really get to explore. There is a really funny "wall of fame" and a lot of other little details I was pretty geeked to check out. Plenty of pics will be forthcoming... The megastore was less crowded this time around, but it still overwhelmed the heck out of me. They seriously make Chelsea everything. It was not unlike what I saw in Vancouver before the start of the winter Olympics.

After popping over to Neil's briefly, I met up with Duane and Nick. They took me to a great little German gastropub (again, where's Shawn?!) and on to another pub where I was able to score a free pint glass simply by asking to buy one. Duane was pretty certain my American accent endeared me to the female server working there. I had a lovely Pimms + Lemonade and after being awake and unshowered for something like 36 hours, called it a night at Neil's flat.



Tuesday morning, I woke up pretty darn late and pretty much went directly to lunch with Neil at my all-time favorite restaurant in London: Wagamama. Neil actually called it "working class", but I don't care. That yaki soba still blows my mind. Since I decided not to do any real sightseeing on this trip, I went off to Covent Garden afterwards to visit Orla Kiely's flagship store again and wandered down Carnaby Street, which despite the abundance of American shops, still has a mod flavor to it. Merc, Ben Sherman, Lambretta... all the classics are there.

I spent the evening having a pint with Duane, playing with Neil's kiddos, and having a nice meal with Neil and Clem. Neil's son, Ralph, took a liking to me, so that was a nice surprise. His little English accent is so cute and he sweetly told me that he is going to ask his daddy if he can visit my "village" one day. I had been telling him all about our zoo, and I think he really liked the sound of that.



Paris coming up shortly...