28 May 2016
Olympic food court
The enormous shopping centre at Stratford
I was last in London in 2010, the Olympics were held here in 2012, better go see the Olympic site then.
It is located east of the city at Stratford, not too far, probably closer to the main part of the city than Sydney olympic park, which I have been to once ever in my life.
Getting here meant getting the tube, I remembered my Oyster card from 2010, and it still works just fine and had credit on it. The Australia dollar has dropped since then so I made money.
The train was deafening. I think something was wrong with it, surely the wheels had not been greased since the war. I know I am a girl when it comes to noise but there were lots of others with their fingers in their ears also.
Anyway, a few stops later, I was there, the local deafness awareness group was in attendance giving out assistance dogs because I now need one.
The area is largely under construction, or maybe re construction, with grand plans to make it a new city centre, like the other new city centre which is nearby at London docklands.
It now occurs to me that Melbourne has copied London with both Southbank and Docklands.
My frequent flyer status allows me to use the high class escalator in each tube station.
This scultpure represents the symbolic waste of hosting the Olympics.
As it turns out, it was the European swimming championships in the old swimming venue. Presumably this is the Dutch synchronized swimming team practicing their underwater dancing after applying their waterproof makeup.
Here it is, the place where Grant Hackett introduced the Australian team to the benefits of stilnox sleeping tablets and then beat his wife half to death.
And the main arena.
Dont worry there is a Westfield nearby, Australians are building most of London.
It is part of a much larger development.
Very similar to the centre at Shephards Bush, it is part indoor part outdoor with a lot of larger shops spread over 2 levels.
The food court is excellent. There are multiple food courts, this is the high end one for snobs like me. Whilst it was busy, the poor person food court with mcdonalds was so busy people were sitting in circles on the floor. Never seen that before.
I managed to find the least flavoursome, most rabbit food like option in the entire centre.
I notice a lot Caribbean food in London, and there is basically none in Australia. The stores always have 'soul' in the name for no good reason.
So heres my hot tip for the best new franchise in 2017, combining the jerk in jerk chicken and the soul in Caribbean soul, we have SOUL JERK.
The centre was really very very busy, made it difficult to walk around. Lots of foreigners with children and large families with old people who could barely walk carrying huge bags of expensive crap to fly home with.
After my rabbit food dinner I was still starving, so I decided to start on breakfast and had some corn flakes. To my surprise they are made in Israel. I thought they only made guns and tanks over there.