We slept in that morning after being out late at Crobar and Trafalger Square. I didn’t roll out of bed until 12:30, and we didn’t even leave the hostel until 2:30. I was okay with that though, since it would be our last chance to sleep in. We really didn’t do a whole lot this entire day.
Since we missed the breakfast, we stopped at this Turkish place right down the street. Chuck got a Kebab roll and I got a Tikka Chicken roll. I had no idea it would be so spicy! It gave me visions of the Mucho Macho Burrito, but it wasn’t quite that hot. Afterward I did have a similar feeling though; the one that comes from drinking a lot of water after eating a spicy food. From there we went to the train station and bought our ticket for the next morning’s ride to Gatwick Airport.
Then we did head out Harrod’s. Not sure if you’ve heard of it, because I hadn’t, but it’s a rather large shopping center. We walked around a bit, but most of the stores were high-scale. We went to the Waterstone’s though. Chuck tried to find Watership Down to no avail. Seems they’d sold their last copy just an hour or so before we got there… Murphy’s Law, right? There are five levels to Harrod’s, and we definitely did not walk around them all. I thought the layout was a bit weird. Instead of a regular mall where there are distinct stores with entrances, this was more like an office building where you could walk into another store without going into a main passage. Felt a bit cramped, really. It was also hard to figure out where the stores were, since you couldn’t see them from afar.
After the failed book-finding, we headed off to Hyde Park. We strolled through and went to the Serpentine Gallery. It’s a small art gallery, and they had only one exhibit there. It was a modern artist, whose name evades me, He has a Popeye series of artwork. It was weird at first, but then interesting. The sculpture-things were inflatable pool-toys sticking through ladders, trashcans, dangling chairs, or other things. Well, we thought they were inflatable pool-toys. Turns out they are actually made of aluminum, but look extremely real. They have the right colors, reflectivity, and even wrinkles. It took me a long while to figure they weren’t plastic, and I was still wondering as we left. The paintings were oil on canvas collages. Lots of consumerist and sexual snippets meshed together. From afar it looks just like a print magazine had been blown up, but closer inspection shows the finer detail and brush strokes. Once the shock of the material and medium faded, I was really impressed. It’s a shame the building was so small; I would have liked to see more artwork.
After the short visit to the Serpentine Gallery, we walked through the rest of the park. Saw a monument to… someone (Chuck, help me out!). It started raining again. Quick diversion. Being a meteorologist in London must be easy: every day it is mostly cloudy with a chance of showers through the entirety day. And it will rain at some point. If you look out the window and it’s not raining, just try to go do something out there and it will start to rain. Now back on track! We walked through the rest of Hyde Park whilst ducking between tree cover, and eventually made it to the Marble Arch station which is just past Speaker’s Corner (no one was speaking in the rain). We took the train to the Angel station again, where we went back to the Borders in the N1 center. Chuck got Watership Down at last! Since I had one ride left on my Oyster card, I took the tube back and Chuck walked. So what if it was just one stop. After the ride I got my 3 pound deposit for the card back. I then walked around for a little bit trying to find a souvenir shop. It was difficult, but I found a hole-in-the-wall market which had a few things, and I got some of them. Can’t give away what I got though, that’d ruin it for the people getting them.
Chuck and I met up back at the hostel and then went to Yum Yum, which was this little Asian restaurant just down the street from our hostel. We both got the Roast Duck with rice which was actually really good! Duck has an interesting and pleasant flavor. After the dinner we went to the Tesco across the street and got some snacks for the voyage home. It consisted of some Jammie Dodgers and dried mango! Chuck spent all but two pence of the last of his change. I still had some to spend the next morning at the airport. Following Tesco, we read and checked the internet. I finally finished Hyperion! The book was good but it ended abruptly. It’s a cliff hanger for the next book, Fall of Hyperion, but it bothers me that I won’t get any resolution until reading its sequel.
We also showered and packed up most of our stuff so leaving in the morning would be quicker. A quick bit about the shower. The two shower units I’d used before had the same problem where it was mostly cold water with a random splash of warmth. This third shower was on the opposing side and a different issue: the water had one setting – scalding. It started off just hot, but it eventually got so hot I was actually scared of burning myself. That is unacceptable. It was on the lowest setting, barely turned on, and it threatened to burn all my skin. And that’s a problem when you’re trying to wash out your shampoo and rinse off the soap. I thought maybe the hot and cold were backwards, but turning the handle to the other direction just made it even hotter. Their showers can’t even have the same fault… impressive. Sometime thereafter we went to sleep. It was the last night in that hostel, thank goodness!