13 July 2019
There is no traffic in London
The area north of Kings Cross is now completely gentrified
Like the title says, the first thing I noticed tonight, no traffic. The daily consumption tax thing for crossing the red line and entering the city centre keeps nearly every car out. This is a great thing. All cities should have it. Walk you lazy assholes.
The next thing I noticed was variety. Variety in building types, food places, shops, parks, markets, grass you are allowed on etc. All in all a much more varied location than Paris. Of course I already knew this, but the area near my hotel has changed drastically since I was last here.
From Kings Cross north to Camden is now all modern buildings, mixed with old industrial things turned into shops and markets. A very nice area as you shall see.
Then a bit later I went to Oxford street, the main shopping street. It was very busy with people, not many cars or buses, but then someone managed to get run over! I took a pic.
Then I remembered that British departments stores still have restaurants, that are cheap, relatively healthy, and very accessible to the solo diner. I took pic.
Since nothing funny happened in the above diatribe, and since I now have English language tv stations, I will explain how British ads are different to ours. They explain everything. In great detail. I find this very strange and a little bit condescending. An ad for a dyson vacuum cleaner explains how if you push the button the vacuum will start and you can suck dirt and debris from the floor of your house. When you are done, you plug it into the wall and it recharges. Once the little blinking light turns off it is charged and you can use it again! All explained in a very happy school teacher voice.
The same then applies for various medical things, if you have a headache, open the box and pull out one of the two slides of capsules. Pop out one or two of the capsules and swallow them one at a time with a glass of water. Once you have swallowed them sit or lie down and wait a few minutes, your headache will start to go away!
Very weird.
My hotel is just across the street from Kings Cross station, which means betting shops, England loves them. This one is great, because 3 homeless guys who are probably homeless due to the betting shop, are passed out directly out the front of the shop. Much like Australia there are lots and lots of betting ads on tv.
I dont know why, but I wandered into Kings Cross station to take a photo.
Heading north and I got to this surprise outdoor area with a canal, near something called the coal drop sheds, where people are watching the Wimbledon tennis on a big floating screen.
As it was about 20c, lots of people cant resist the lure of a fountain.
Here is just one of a few markets in this area. I think this one is called canopy market.
Canal boats. I think they are strange in that there is nowhere on these boats to sit outside and enjoy the weather. The full length is under a non opening roof.
Real grass you can sit on! More of that to come.
This is an independent record label market. Apparently people still buy records.
I briefly returned to my tiny room to check if I had been robbed yet. Here is the view. Outside the window 2 fat women were having a tourettes battle. It was simultaneously amusing and concerning.
MORE GRASS. Parks people can use.
No, I have no idea how the water authority is preventing your house from being broken into.
I almost managed to get this properly square on! You can actually correct parallax in lightroom, I have never played with the tool.
Here is a random street. Note its cloudy. There was a bit of sun, but nothing like the bright blue sky of Paris.
There are nice streets full of little houses, with more variety and general niceness than Paris.
The start of the busy Oxford street shopping area looking towards Piccadilly Circus. Everyone who has been to London has been here.
The top floor of John Lewis has a restaurant. I was excited.
There were many healthy options, I settled on Sri Lankan vegetarian curry. It was really quite nice, and very cheap! I could have taken my pick from 20 different tables. How convenient!
I have no idea at all how or why, but the Microsoft store has what I assume is a real Mclaren Senna, that you can sit in and play xbox games. These are about a million bucks and limited to about 500 being built? Maybe Mclaren built them a rolling shell, but its still all made of carbon fibre.
This is where a guy got run over. He is on the ground here. There was a bang, a series of metallic crashing noises, then general screaming and panic. I suspect he went over the car that hit him rather than under it, he did not seem to badly hurt, maybe a broken leg.
The church near my hotel is a bit weird. It has these statues of people half buried, head first. They are presumably trying to dig down to hell.
And now two of my favorite things. Marks and Spencer fruit salad, of the WITHOUT MELON because apparently melons cause cancer, and their excellent diet ginger beer. I really wish Marks and Spencer would come to Australia.