Spitalfields Market and Hackney

Hello again everyone!

Today was my first actual, proper 'day out' in a while. The new people, Troy and Shannon moved in yesterday, so finally I can get out and stop searching for tennants! Yay! So, my plan was to head up to Spitalfields Market (an arts & crafts market in east London) and then wander until I found other interesting things.

But, first of all, I'd like to point out that the BBC weather centre and I seem to have different ideas of what "sunny intervals" mean. They said this:

And I saw this:

Hmmm.... sunny intervals? fog? Silly BBC!! Either way, it was rather warm and pleasant, despite the fog, so I set out anyways.

I then headed down to Spitalfields Market to do some random shopping. While the things that were there were cool, like funky t-shirts and handmade bags, there wasn't a whole lot of booths open.I would imagine that come summer, this market will be awesome - especially when more booths are open.

In the meantime I had lunch at a noodle restaurant called Wagamama. I ordered the "Wagamama Ramen" and it was actually quite good. I got a huge bowl of noodles with chicken, a shrimp, some fried tofu, spinach, a peice of crab and some other unidentified stuff. It was filling and fairly reasonably priced.

After lunch, I started wandering around, just looking for interesting stuff. I headed north, basically just following a neat looking street after neat looking street. Eventually I ended up in Hackney, one of London's 'roughest' neighborhoods. I say 'rough' with '' because it wasn't the worst neighborhood I've ever walked through. It was certainly more run-down than other parts of London, but had a lot of interesting shops/bars and graffiti. I probably wouldn't walk through this area in the middle of the night, but during the day there was more businessmen about than hooligans.Although someone did build some sort of dragon/bird/gargoyle of scrap metal and perched it on top of this building. Hmmm...If I had been with someone else I would've made them stand beside this little thought-bubble and pretend to think something important, however, I was bymyself so you'll have to imagine me standing there.

Fortunately Hackney did have some upsides, like this adorable little street!

I could live on this street.

After walking aimlessly around Hackney, trying not to look TOO much like a tourist, I gave up and hopped a bus back to the London Bridge, where they had just unveiled part of the bridge last week. They are currently working on re-painting the whole bridge, which I guess it going to take over 4 years, since they don't want to cover the whole bridge up (the tourists would get angry).

You don't really realize how faded the old part was until you see the new part.

It'll sure look spiffy when its all fixed up, but sadly I won't be in London anymore to see the completed bridge.

Tomorrow there is a handyman comming over to fix out boiler (the flame keeps going out when we turn on the central heating), and then I have to do loads of laundy.

More pictures of other things to come later!