London Bits and Pieces

The past couple of days have been rather uneventful. Well, uneventful might not quite be the appropriate word. I did add another year to my age this week, which I suppose does count as an “event”, but a more personal one, not the kind of thing most people would find interesting reading about. After all, everybody has a birthday once a year. I think what I'm trying to say is that I haven't experienced anything blog-worthy recently or at least I can't think of anything I can spin into a story interesting enough to post. Well, that's not entirely true either, Saturday night's birthday celebrations turned kind of wild in the end and would make amusing reading material, but it's probably better not to publicly publish the details of the night on the Internet...


So, today's post is a mix of random stuff, bits and pieces I found lying around in my “archives”. And what better way to start small talk than talking about the weather, the Brits do it all the time. We have to face the fact that summer really is over now, I took this picture of sunrise over the rooftops just after 07h00 one morning, a lot later than the mid-summer sunrise at around 04h00 in June when we arrived.








The temperature is also dropping fast and we've had one or two really grey and misty mornings.






The other day I realised that I've never been to Canary Wharf, even though it's just across the river from where I live. So I decided to take the ferry from the Hilton Docklands Hotel in stead of the boring old tube to the other side of the river for an afternoon outing.







This was taken from the pier while waiting for the ferry:




And this is the tunnel from the hotel to the pier:




I have been told that my previous post on the London Underground makes it seem a lot nicer than it actually is, so here's a shot of a busy day on Canary Wharf Underground Station:




Last weekend we went to the Olympia Centre in Kensington for the South African day of the Toast Festival. I don't think the event was really big enough to justify being called a festival, but it was nonetheless nice to have a few South African beers and boerewors rolls and get nostalgic with good music from back home. The centre itself is also very cool, with a very high ceiling and lots of windows, creating a kind of outdoor feel indoors, perfect for the unpredictable British weather. This is Freshly Ground on stage:




And finally, this is how I keep my room cheerful. It's one of two printed cotton throws I bought at a Camden Town Market stall. I'm using this one to block out the sun through my loft window so I can sleep during the day.