One week down...

After nearly a week, I finally got some time to put a post together. Kind of a "duh" statement but London is a really busy city. I arrived safe, sound and utterly exhausted at 6:50am last Thursday morning. Settled in at my home away from home. Worked for two days. Got a tour of the South Bank on Friday evening, including a lovely view of the London Eye:



It's bigger than it looks here - each car carries 20 people. And it's surrounded on the sidewalk by street performers, including about 25 different people painted like statues as well as this gentleman walking around with a bike balanced on his head:



Saturday, I took a stroll through the Portobello Road Market, three streets full of displays by seemingly every clothing 'recycler,' jewelry maker and hawker of second-hand stuff in all of London. It was incredibly crowded, no matter where you were in the sprawling stalls:



You could even buy a bike from a stall...though the van carrying the bikes to the market was a bit more interesting than the bikes themselves:



Interestingly, some of the original designers have created an online storefront for their wares as well.

On Sunday, my boss arrived for meetings this week and he decided we needed to 'see the sights.' So off we went to see, in no particular order, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre:



The Tower of London (and met the only female Beefeater, though I didn't get a picture):



And a pub on the Thames that was originally built in 1610 or something. I don't have a picture of the pub, but I do have a picture of my favorite part of it:



On the subject of food and drink, since my arrival, I've eaten pub food, Spanish, Lebanese, Moroccan and plain old sandwiches. My diet will probably get a bit more boring as soon as my boss leaves and I'm back on my own, though. And people aren't kidding when they say curry is the national dish here. You can get a bowl for next to nothing on just about every block.