Landed in London and made our way to our hostel near Paddington. Had a late lunch in a nearby pub and decent indian for dinner. The only other noteable event being my anger from Prague again boiling over at Macky and Jo, who can be a bit full on when one is not in the best of moods.
The next day we slept in and then around midday got the tube to Chalk Farm where we met up with our mate Greg from back home, who now lives in Camden, working on movie special effects on some pretty high profile films. We had a beer in a little pub then went up to Greg's flat to meet him roommates and have a look at the place, which was very nice, before going for a walk into Camden center.
Greg showed us the sights of Camden and then we had lunch in a pub where we discovered our first "freshers". Freshers is an English university tradition where for the first week of the year the first year students, or "freshers", are taken on a series of pub crawls, drinking adventures and hazing activities. We found them, at 2pm, at pub 10 of a 13 location pub crawl, all blind drunk and covered in plain white shirts, mostly customised, primarily by the girls whose seemed to mysteriously be lacking various parts, coated in obscene permanent marker graffiti and often with bunny ears, bunny tails or bowties.
After our run in with the freshers and very entertaining lunch we made our way back through the Camden markets, which are the biggest, most impressive markets I have seen, with every stall selling completely different merchandise, whole sections devoted to specific types of clothing and peaking at a shop in the middle called "Cyberdog", a 4 storey shop devoted to cyberpunk, industrial, rave and fetish clothing and accessories and hugely futuristically stylised.
After that we separated from Greg for a while as we went back to the hostel to change and clean ourselves before we met up again around 8 at a pub we were told had a metal club for Mackys birthday on in the evenings. After a couple of hours of pre drinks the club opened at 10:30 so we left our newly made Israeli friends to head downstairs into the club. After paying our entry we discovered that it was 1) empty and 2) indie night so we left and went for a wander to try and find something better which climaxed at a pub playing super heavy death metal, but with very few patrons. We asked one helpful soul whether there was a club that would play "stuff like System of a Down, Slipknot, Korn etcetera" and were told "oh, you want a gay club" so, giving up, we went back to the indie club which turned out to be ok, cheap drinks and the music was, at least, not shitty dance music.
The next day was primarily spent on and around Oxford street, trying to find Macky a new jacket and Jo some warm clothes, as she hadn't realised that maybe Scotland and England in late October might be slightly chilly. After a while Lewis and I left them to their shopping and settled ourselves in a pub to watch Chelsea dominate Bolton 5-1. Midway through the next game, Arsenal and somebody, the others rejoined us, having successfully bought... Jo a jacket.
We then headed back to the hostel before getting Thai for dinner then giving Macky his birthday cake. After cake Lewis and I watched The Lovely Bones with a bunch of people then Lewis went to bed and I played a couple of lazy drinking games before joining them.
The next morning Lewis once again left us to go up to Liverpool while Macky, Jo and I begun our UK tour by jumping on a train to Bath.
No comments:
Post a Comment