As we were leaving, the cleaning lady showed up again and asked us why we weren't vacating the room, since her list said we'd only be staying one night. We told her that we needed to go sort out our room arrangements at reception, since we still had a few nights there and wanted to see if we could keep our room. Keep in mind that this was at least an hour before check-out time, so we had no idea what the cleaning lady's rush was!
At reception, thankfully, we arranged to keep our room, so there would be no more suitcases to lug around for a few days. At the pharmacy over the road, thankfully, we got new cough syrup that promised to have us better in no time. We took it right there at the counter, and it was horrible! Nicole laughed when I took it first, saying "I wish I could take a photo of your face!" That seemed like a good idea, so I took a few photos of her face when she had her dose. They're a very entertaining series of pictures!
We finally got to the Contiki office and they briefed us on our tour package for the next few days. Basically, we had a two day bus pass for the hop-on and hop-off topless busses that go past the major attractions in London. We also had two day pass public transport tickets to use as we pleased on busses or the underground. We could choose between a variety of shows to go watch at a West End theatre. Finally, we had an included day trip out to either a church or palace before heading off to Stonehenge and Bath.
It was a lot to think about, so Nicole and I decided to discuss it over a leisurely lunch at an Indian Buffet restaurant called the Poppadom Express near our hotel. Boy have I missed Indian food! I must have eaten a dozen poppadoms on my own. There was a nice selection of Indian appetizers to choose from, a mix of meat and vegetarian curries, and some salads to choose from. I had a prawn curry that my Indian food dreams are made of. It was amazing! Nicole and I were expecting the curries to be pretty mild, due to the fact that buffets have to appeal to everyone. Again, though, we found the food to be much spicier than expected. My taste buds have become tame and lazy!
As for our plan for the next few days, we had decided to Camden Market for the remainder of the afternoon, since there wasn't too much time left for sightseeing. Our day trip was the easiest decision to make: we'd beheaded to Windsor, Stonehenge, and Bath the next day. No more cathedrals and churches for us! As for our remaining two days, we'd go see the London Dungeon (for me), Tate Modern gallery (for Nicole), and the Tower of London on one day, and Madame Tussaudes, a Rock and Roll walking tour, and the West End theatre the next day.
After heading back to the Contiki office to buy tickets in advance for the attractions that we had chosen and to book our day trip, we headed off to the central train station to validate our tickets. Following that, it was time to go shopping! Nicole gave me a bit of fashion history about the punk movement that began in Camden on our way there and warned me that every second store would be a tattoo parlour. In fact, at one point, we found three tattoo places in a row! The lamest part about Camden is a section titled "Camden Market," which really is just a flea market.
Once you get beyond that, you discover that the punk movement may have been born there, but also never really left. There are pierced and tattooed people everywhere in their studded and spiked leather and brightly coloured mohawk hairstyles. Having said that, there are some lovely shops mixed in selling some gorgeous jewellery, delicate lace clothing, and all sorts of vintage things. The vintage clothes are fun to look at but hard to buy from since every item only comes in a single size, so it is hard to find anything that will fit you. Nicole got a great waistcoat for John, but that was all we managed to purchase at the vintage store.
The Contiki brochure recommended enjoying a taco on the banks of the river while in Camden, but we couldn't find the river, and the taco stalls looked somewhat dodge (well all the food stalls did, especially if you compared them to the food stalls at the Christmas markets we had been to). Instead, we had a bit of gluhwein (our favourite thing to do in Europe), and made our way via bus to Oxford street, where more high end shopping could be done. London clothing stores were having some pretty impressive sales, but that also meant that they were jam packed full of people. Eventually, Nicole decided to call it quits, eventually, saying that navigating the crowds were too stressful.
I had to agree, even though I found navigating the bus system a bit stressful, too. While we had a map for the underground, making it easier to find our way around, we didn't have anything similar for the bus system. So we literally needed to walk to random stops in order to figure out which one would take us to our hotel, much like we had done in Rome. The difference between Rome and London, though, was that the Londoners weren't as helpful as the Romans had been, so we pretty much needed to figure it all out ourselves.
Eventually, between the two of us, we found our way back to the hotel with a minimum amount of walking (to Nicole's delight). We tried to upload blogs using the wifi for a while, simultaneously checking emails and sending messages on our phone, but eventually gave up and headed to bed. We didn't even have dinner that night, since we were still pretty full from the Indian lunch, and still a bit put off by the dodge tacos.
Since we knew that we wouldn't be changing rooms again before we had to pack up and leave London, we stopped worrying about keeping everything stored in our luggage. Within minutes of being back in our hotel room, it looked as though our bags had exploded across the floor. We were too lazy to keep things tidy. It was great to have a lazy day for a change, though, since our schedule had been pretty jam-packed before then. We went to bed having not got much done, but having had a really great day.
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