The Markets of London

.. have gotten a thrashing from us recently.

Last weekend we went to The Columbia Road Flower Market (20 mins walk from our place) - its probably smaller than the flower section of the Prahran market, yet basically all of London goes there on the weekend and crowds around the dozen stalls. And everyone kept telling us we had to do it, go figure. We didn't get it.

The weekend before we went to Portobello markets in Notting Hill, which I loved - all British memorabilia and antiques.

In typical British style, all of the Londoners who weren't at the flower market, were at the Portobello Markets. 

We then did the Camden markets, which we didn't like (delish doughnuts aside) - every stall was either selling bongs or punk leather spandex get ups. Not really us. Crowds = the same though, bizarrely. We also decided to walk there, a quick 1 1/2 hour stroll from our place, which meant by the time we got there, we were exhausted. Not great planning really.

One market we do like is the London Borough Market - much like the deli section of the South Melbourne Market I though. I bought 5 french cheeses for 10pounds. Oddly, there was little fresh fruit, and no meat at all. On the upside, there was fresh Paella and jugs of sangria. It is also a 5 min walk from my client site at the moment, so I pop down at lunch time.

xx

Windsor Castle & Heston's feasts

It was promising to be a beautiful weekend of 16 degrees (and sunny) in London on the weekend, so Booba and I decided to do a day trip to Windsor Castle, Lizzie's weekend home.

I left Booba in charge of organising the train timetables and booking us tickets, so of course we had to demonstrate our sprinting skills through Waterloo train station, and of course we ended up fare evading (approx fine £250 pounds each) after we discovered that our Oyster cards didn't work out in the country side.

Logistics aside, a mere 45 mins train ride and we were in Windsor.

We both loved touring around Windsor Castle, originally built by William the Conqueror in 1066 (!). It certainly has withstood the test of time. It has been occupied for over 900 years by the royal family, and is the largest castle in use in the world. Lizzie goes there most weekends, and hosts the more important of foreign dignitaries (such as ourselves) there.

My favourite part was St George's church, where Henry VIII is buried with Jane Seymore (why she got the honour I'm not sure).

Booba's favourite part was the State |Rooms (which we were quite fortunate to see, as they are closed most of the year due to being in use). Talk about ornate. One room had 6 Renoirs. Another had the bed specially designed for Napolean when he came to stay (standard size) with his initials embroidered on the quilt.

We stopped for a quick bite (duck pate and nibblies) at a French restaurant, then walked down to Eton about 10 mins away. Eton for those not in the know, is the school that the posh send their kids to - its a boys school and they literally have to wear tails every day. It is unbelievably a public school yet is ultra reasonably priced at £30,000 + about £10k in extras (if you want your kids to have pens and books) and who knows how much on the school uniform.  No less than 19 Prime Ministers of the UK have attended Eton, along with the royal family.

The school:

Post Eton we caught a taxi to the tiny village of Bray, about 25 mins away. It is a mock tudor town with about 20 tiny houses, 1 restaurant and 2 pubs. The restaurant is the Fat Duck, by Heston, and the 2 pubs are ... owned by Heston. They call it Hestonville.

Bray - the entirety of it

Not being able to get into the Fat Duck (3 months wait list) we went to the Hinds Head for a drink (where Booba had to duck the whole time we were inside - the Tudors were midgets) for a wine and a Guinness, followed by dinner at The Crown (Heston's other pub). We had a starter of fried whitebait and mains of steak and ale pie. Delish. Topped it off with home made Eton fudge.

The Fat Duck:

All in all we had a grand time, and Booba had a good opportunity to cultivate his posh accent, a nice change from Cockney Booba.

Chasing a chicken around London

We were invited on the weekend to partake in an age old British tradition: the (chicken) pub crawl.

I think this photo says it all

Michael met the guy in the photo about 10 seconds earlier. They bonded over their love of cockney rhyming slang.

The rules of the crawl were as follows:

• everyone puts their name and 20 pounds into a hat
• we are drawn into teams
• the last person to have their name drawn is the chicken, and has to donn a gigantic chicken suit
• the chicken then finds a pub in Soho and begins to drink the pot of money while the teams try to track her (in this case) down

 This would have worked flawlessly if there weren't 48 pubs in the geographical area we were assigned to crawl in. Both Booba and I attempted to pace ourselves, Booba by having 11 shots at the first 5 pubs he went to.

I on the other hand embarrassed myself by my inability to keep up with the MAD BRITISH DRINKERS in my team. Seriously the British drink like animals ( which seems to be a source of great pride on my pointing this out). On the plus side, I did get to sample about a dozen different ciders.

Our flat

Things I have discovered about the London rental market:

• it is basically insane
• the general rule of not spending more than 1/3 of your salary on rent/mortgages do not apply
• you will be hard pressed to find a place that doesn't have molding carpet, cracked walls, isn't opposite a youth rehabilitation centre or above a take away curry place
• if you are able to find this 'dream' apartment, it will be so small you and your partner will have to time share the single bed that touches all the walls in your 'bedroom'.

 With this in mind, we were very lucky to find a flat that had been on the market just a few hours and fit all of our basic criteria (would not bankrupt us, would not give us lice etc). Maybe not so much luck as it was... paying the real estate agent a 400 pound 'finders fee'.

It is actually cheaper to buy an apartment in London than it is to rent - interest rates are around 3% - but you need to have a 40% deposit for first home buyers, thanks to the credit crunch.

Rental market aside, we found a flat, and on Monday, we moved in.

Our lounge

Booba cooking in a proper sized kitchen (in his jim jams)

Tuesday morning we woke up to a police barricade on our front doorstep, blocking off our street. Turns out one of the occupy London groups had a camp set up right next door, and they had been evicted overnight. Loudly and unhappily it would seem.

Protests as to the unstable nature of capitalism aside, we are about a 30 second walk from the tube station, which is 2 stops to the 'flinders street station' of tube stops (ie central london).  I have taken to walking to work to avoid the manic crowds at peak hour, and it is 20 mins door to door.

Our bedroom

We literally have a heater in every room (including the kitchen), with 2 in the lounge room. Our landlord is clearly a fan of artwork, with there being over a 15 pieces throughout the place, including two random statues of people unknown.

Its quite secure, and we have a concierge who kindly accepts my amazon.co.uk deliveries. There are several supermarkets nearby (although supermarket is overselling where Londoners buy food - more 7/11s than anything else. I tried to buy bicarb soda at 3 separate supermarkets the other day to no avail).

Its also near 2 gyms which is tres important as you need to be hardcore to go running on the streets of London and there are no parks whatsoever near us. There is a canal which Michael has run along once and says is quite nice, but the gyms are all heated to 23degrees so thats my choice dujour anytime.