London - Day 5

Today Gayoung arrived in London. At 7:45 she walked through the arrival gate at King's Cross train station, and P and I were waiting for her. We got her an Oyster card and took the Victoria back home. We took a short nap and had a proper breakfast before we left again, for Brixton Market. It's not a huge place, but it has some really nice spots, little boutiques and coffee shops. 

Next was Greenwich. We transfered to a DLR at Canary Wharf, an area that looked like a scenario from Inception. We got there at around noon and started by getting something to eat. P took us to a Chinese restaurant close to the station. Pretty good food, but the portions were enormous, none of us finished his rice. After that we startet our walk to the place where time stands still. 

We walked through a nice little park and up a hill where we found the Royal Observatory. It's home to the GMT and also a museum of time and a camera obscura, but what was actually nice was a thing called 'Time stood still for me when ...' and then people could write their moments on cards and throw them in the collecting box. I wanted to write something nice, too, but all the good things I could think of weren't true.

On our way out we bought coffee and tee and saw an amazing evergreen tree. It's crazy how something as simple as a tree can leave you in awe. With a double-decker bus we got to New Cross Gate. There we got on the East London Line and found our way back into the city. We got off at Shoreditch and walked through the Spitalfields Market. We seemed to be either too late or too early, most of the stand owners were just packing in, or out.

After we briefly said hello to a friend of Patrick's, we walked towards Brick Lane. We checked out a little  art gallery, walked by a famous hamburger place and finally got to a bookstore where I bought Farewell Summer by Ray Bradbury. On our way back we checked out a vintage clothing market, but it wasn't doing it for us, because by then we were slowly getting tired.

For dinner we decided to go back home and rest a little before we met up with Ah Reum and a group of friendly Korean scientists. Their meeting took place at a Korean bar called Red Devil, we got there at around nine. It was super awkward at first, but with more people came more drinks, and with more drinks more people started to loosen up. It turned out to be a very nice round to join, I think we were just too tired to really mingle and go mental. 

Still, it was a funny evening.