London part 2: Subways, shopping, and Sherlock Holmes

Despite staying up late (and almost falling asleep) watching the Olympics, I woke up bright and early to meet Jenn at Camden train station, since she had heard of a large market that she had been referred to by everyone and their mother. I figured an extra half hour would help since it was further north.

That would have worked out fine and dandy had the Underground not exercised its customary practice of shutting down half the lines on weekends for maintenance. This weekend, the entire Circle line was shut, stretches of the Bakerloo line were down (which messed things up for the trip to Baker St), eight different lines were partially closed, and the station that had been shut down on the Northern line? Camden. Yup. So while I was on the train, I was trying to figure out the closest way to get there, and they were saying to get off at Euston station, two stops away from Camden, which I did. Then I called Jenn, and it turns out she'd stopped at Mornington which was the stop right before Camden, so I hauled ass back to the train, and got off there instead, where we learned that the markets were only a short walk away. Welcome to the London Underground: there are multiple overlapping lines for a reason.


View of Camden Market from the bridge. There were a bunch of stores before that, selling more touristy stuff, strangely enough including various pipes, hookahs, bongs, and stocks of flavoured tobacco. And condoms with "I Love London" on the wrapping.



In addition to the shops, there were loads of food stalls and a couple of eating areas. But how many eating areas have scooter seats with a river view?



View down the market. They mainly sold clothing and accessories, but there were plenty of other things as well. Some of the stuff looked really good, but we found the two best answers to resist temptation:

1) "It's getting too hot!" (used in response to the temptation to buy nifty jackets)
2) "I'm too fat!" (used to ward off sellers of clothes that are adorable but we know we will genuinely never fit in even with Weight Watchers and Crisco)

After a good three hours of wandering around the market, we decided to head to Baker Street. This was also our first time on a bus, since it would be quicker than changing trains 9213907 times, and the bus came every 10 minutes or so.


Woo!



Even more woo!



A notice about Jack the Ripper, for authenticity.



A replica of Holmes's bedroom, complete with possessions.



The desk in the study. Watson's medical kit can be seen resting on the chair.



Fireplace! A little blurry, sadly. Note the hats on the table :)



Victorian-era potty?



Bronze bust of the great man himself.



The second floor consisted of artifacts linked with the stories. This glass case contains some of the weapons described in the books.



Voodoo doll used by an accomplice (can't remember which story though)



Some of the rooms also had figures of characters or scenes. The one on the left is from "The Man with the Twisted Lip" and the one on the right is from "The Musgrave Ritual".




Professor Moriarty, looking suitably evil and plotting something.





Um, yeah.



I think this picture pretty much sums up the experience. :)




Not only did they put a statue of him outside Baker St station, his profile adorns the tiles inside.

So I lied about there being two parts to the London post; it's gonna be 3 now since I'm getting really tired and there is a lot more awesomeness to cover. My energy levels have been at about 30% with this cough and hopefully this week's course of antibiotics will help, but the whole rest and fluids thing needs to be done as well.

G'night!