Sep 24 -- London! -- Day 2

Marita and Marcello seemed quite pleased to take us out sightseeing, so in the morning we went to Camden Town, a polar opposite environment to the night before.

This area has markets of great handmade clothing by independent unknown designers. It's not junky old military resale like a Ragstock shop. It was super trendy with attitude. I loved it. There were also canals in this area, which had nice boats passing through locks, and little manmade islands in the middle with groups of goth teens sitting around applying makeup to each others' faces. There were tents of Rasta guys, booths of steaming homemade curries sold by Indian ladies, mohawk-wearing punks holding advertising signs, and old stone buildings with fancy art boutiques. One guy made lamps out of computer circuit boards which were more attractive than you would think. Marcello brought us to a Brazillian cafe.

After leaving we saw a girl in the street painting a huge 20 x 40 foot canvas taped to the sidewalk of a Boticelli painting. She had a sign saying she'd been working on it for five weeks. The skies looked a bit stormy, and we wondered what she would do if it rained.

In the afternoon we went to the Tate Modern gallery. In general I have lots of criticism of modern art museums, and post-1950s art in general. But the Tate Modern blew me away! It was by far the most clever and intriguing collection I've seen in a modern art museum in a long time. Wish I'd had more time to see it all. It's huge!

We then set out hoping to get a nice warm tea and scones, but the next nice place we found walking up the riverfront of the Thames was a fine old British pub, all lined with warm woods and fabric wallpaper -- very tempting on a cool grey evening. They didn't serve scones, so of course we went for a beer. Very cheerful crowd inside, as any good pub should have.

For dinner we went to Brick Lane, a street lined with Indian restaurants. We all remembered the AMAZING Indian food in Singapore (which unknown to many people, has a very large population of Indians and absolutely beautiful Indian food.) So we had high standards. It wasn't as good as our favorite little shack in Holland Village (a part of Singapore) but it was sooooooooooooooo good nonetheless. I love Indian food. MMMmmm. Butter Chicken!

Then we went home with warm full bellies. We watched a movie (Austin Powers...uhhh!) and went to sleep.