London - Shopping in the Rain

Saturday May 27th, we took some time off from more the more cultural stuff (not sure if Footloose and Blue Man Group really qualifies here...) and hit the two poles of London shopping: 1) Camden Town, 2) Harrods. It was a day of intermittant heavy rains, but luckily, many of the booths in the markets of Camden Town had some kind of overhead protection and although we got wet, it wasn't too bad. We totally enjoyed ourselves, walking the endless markets where you could buy just about anything that was, ummmmh, "fringy". There were lots of places selling vintage clothing, lots of studded leather, piercing shops, platform boots, t-shirts, antiques, international foods (the burrito we shared was awesome!), artwork, crafts, jewelry, hats, and bags. In an attempt to satisfy Vee's need for a breakfast-oriented meal, we stopped in a little cafe for coffees and cakes, which provided a nice break from the rain as well. Having bought some gifts for a few special folks, we then caught the tube to Knightsbridge and walked the world famous Harrod's department store for a few hours. The spectrum of products available for sale was wide-ranging, and the prices were absolutely ridiculously exhorbatant. In the kids toys section, there was a "toy" jeep that was a miniature Land Rover jeep listed at over 22,000 Br pounds (about $40k). The bed sets we liked started at about $5k. And, a funny looking ladies t-shirt was $150. We bought a 10oz bottle of lemonade, and it set us back about $2.50 which was cheap in comparison to everything else. We took the tube back to Leicester Square, since our Goodge Street station was closed for renovations of the Northern Line, and walked back to our hotel with a quick stop in a cafe for some early evening refreshments, and later we picked up some fish and chips, beers and sweets. The rest of the night we read, wrote, and talked. The Madison House lost electricity today, and I found the computers in their lab to not be working, nor their Internet connection so I got all that fixed for them, and now we have wireless Internet in our room too. Yay!!!