Interesting day out in London (London in General)

Member Name: teccus

Product:	London in General
Date:	21/04/01 (1605 review reads)
Rating:

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My girlfriend and I planned to go up to London. Usually English people don't go up to London, as they don't see London in tourist eyes, as it is so close to home. Anyway we were planning to go to London. On our 'go to' list was Camden market, Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square, Hammleys (we're all kids at heart), and anything else we could fit in.

Our first stop was Camden market. The market was much bigger than I thought and I found it hard to keep track of my girlfriend when she kept running of to look at all the clothes. Camden market is known for selling 'grunger' style clothes as the fashion calls it. I must say there is something for everyone there.

While we were looking at the clothes one of the market sellers came up to us and told us that if we wanted to try on any of the clothes we could as they had a changing room. When I heard this I thought, that’s strange a market having a changing room, but I thought nothing of it. After spending 50 minutes looking at the clothes, Helen (my girlfriend) found 2 items she wanted to try on. She went to the market seller that told us about the changing room and he told Helen to stand in-between two racks of clothes. Helen looked quite puzzled but did what they asked and at the end of the racks of clothes the market sellers pinned up two blankets forming a type of box room, this was the changing room. I could see the embarrassment of Helens face, anyone could see into the little room they had made. After trying on the jeans she wanted to, Helen decided *not* to try on the T-Shirt but to guess that it fitted.

Camden High Street was just as exciting as the market. It was full of shops selling anything you wanted. Suddenly while walking up Camden high street I got a hard tap on the shoulder from this foreign man in his twenties blurting out all these drug names at me saying 'Coke, Heroin, Pot, Speed, You buy? You buy? Yes?', coming from Woking things like t
his are kept more discreet and you don't usually get people rushing up to you to sell you drugs like they were selling hot dogs. This was quite shocking.

It was a nice warm sunny day at the time so walking up the high street didn't take much energy.

The next stop was Oxford Street where Hammleys was located. After walking in the wrong direction down Oxford Street we looked at the map when we reached the London Hilton. After finally getting to Hammleys, it was just like it was last time I had gone, it seemed smaller. It was full of children playing with all the toys and being amazed by the magicians of the ground floor.

Hammleys has 5 floors and is full of toys. I still find the toys fascinating and had to drag Helen away from the puzzle section. In the end Helen ended up buying a Venus fly trap.

Helen and I got the underground to Piccadilly Circus and spent a few hours playing on the games machines at Trocadero, I think I lost about £10 on the 2p machines where you put in the coin to knock more coins of the edge.

We then strolled along to Soho just for the sake of it. Walking along it didn't look as seedy as it was made out to be, then we saw a side ally of shops and decided to walk down it. It was like we walked into another world, it seemed like Vegas meets London. There were flashing neon lights saying 'Brief encounters' and 'XXX Shop'. My girlfriend and I were both on guard at this time, we both and never experienced any of this before. When looking in the entrances to some of these shops we saw some of the 49 year old strippers poke their head out attempt to get us to come in, this really made us feel sick, you would really have to go to Soho to get the real idea about how ugly these women were, seriously ugly, the type of ugly that makes you want to cringe... *shudder*

Some of the shops we did go into in Soho were selling things like 'how to grow your own pot' and other
books like this. Apart from the odd respectable shop the rest were strip joints and sex shops.

By now our legs were aching and we were just lazing about London walking about where ever. We went to Trafalgar Square and were mistaken for foreign tourists by a man who kindly pointed out Big Ben for us, saying 'B-i-g B-e-n', I politely said 'Thanks, I know'. We then walked down to Big Ben and Downing Street.

From here we moved on to Leicester where the premier of 'One night at Mc cools' was showing at the Warner Brothers cinema and as a special guest Liv Tyler and Kate Moss were appearing. The crowed was massive full with photographers. In the background we had music play from buskers which set a nice evening atmosphere.

We wanted to end the day down the pub, so we went to Yates's but got turned away for being to scruffily dressed, it was a shame as it was a nice pub but in the end we both decided to go home.

Over all London is a nice play to go to and fun, you who haven't been should try to go and experience your British culture.

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