A Different Side of London

My parents were in London this past week, so I went up to see them yesterday and came back this afternoon. The trip served another purpose as well: I took my ring in to Tiffany to get sized. The three of us walked down Piccadilly from the tube station to Old Bond Street this morning, and we thought we'd probably arrived at the right street when we saw De Beers on the corner. We turned down the street, and boy did we feel out of place. Between De Beers and Tiffany, there was Gucci, Alexander McQueen, Armani, Ferragamo, Chanel, Joesph... and us, in our scruffy jeans and t-shirts.

The ring will take a week to size, plus a couple of days for them to post it back to me. At least half a dozen times since I gave it over this morning I've felt for my ring, panicked for a split second that it isn't there, then realised it shouldn't be. I've put another ring on that finger for the time being, so I don't give myself a mini heart attack a dozen times a day for the next week or so. Mum suggested I ask them for a courtesy ring to wear while mine's in for maintenance. I didn't think there was much of a chance they'd say yes, so I declined to ask them ;).

Mum & Dad were staying in a flat near Warwick Avenue, in an area of London known as Little Venice. I had no idea that part of town even existed! It's really lovely, with beautiful 5-storey houses - mostly split up into flats now, though, like the one we stayed in. Yesterday evening we went to a restaurant that's on a bridge over the canal, and the canal boats disappeared into, or emerged from, the tunnel beneath us every so often.


Today it poured down between about 09:00 and 10:00 but after that it was nice and sunny. After we got back from Tiffany, we took the canal boat to Camden and had a look round the market. Camden Market is world-famous but I'd never been before - and never really had any desire to go, but it was great! There was a fairly serious fire in one of the market buildings in February, and in fact what's left of the building (a few outside walls and not much else, all scaffolded pretty heavily) was clearly visible from the boat, as the building is right on the canal, but there were still lots of other market buildings and stalls to see. We didn't have very much time to look round as we had to get back in time to catch our respective trains, but we had a bite to eat and a quick browse around the stalls before getting the boat back to pick up our luggage from the flat. I'll definitely spend more time in that part of town in future.

I think I overstretched my stride at one point when I was walking back to the flat last night, because I woke up this morning with a pulled muscle behind my left knee (my injured leg). If it weren't for that, I would have been walking almost normally today, but the pulled muscle did slow me down again. It didn't spoil things at all - but I'll be spending most of tomorrow resting and elevating my foot!