Making it up as we go...Train Tickets, Double Decker Bus Rides, Indian Food and a Jolly Good Stroll!

Best intentions and all that...We had intended to go antiquing and headed out to the Islington section  of London to check out "Camden Passage", which was advertised as a series of quaint little pedestrian only cobbled alleyways with a warren of  little antique shops and stalls along with cute little pubs and restaurants. After a long tube ride with a couple of connections we exited the tube to at a nice little suburb of London, Angel, and followed our phone navigator down a couple of side streets and ended up at Camden Passage, not quite as advertised.

Yes, there was a cobbled alleyway, yes there were antique shops and stalls (about four...), yes there were pubs and restaurants (like three of em...), and yes, we were done in like ten minutes.

Oh, and by the way, forgive us for the next batch of photo's being time stamped, we didn't realize we had enabled that device on our camera. We know you can use photo shop to remove the stamp and touch the photo up again but let's face it, we're just not very smart, so get used to it!

Hmmm...Well it was all of ten thirty in the morning and we we're pretty much done with the day's activity. But that's the great thing about travel, we just readjusted our plans. It's not like we knew what we were doing anyway, it's not like we had some kind of pressing appointment, hell, we can do WHATEVER we want, but it obviously wasn't going to be antique shopping. We sat on a nice bench in the cute little common square and decided to take our first ride on one of London's iconic red double-decker buses (which are literally everywhere, and which I'm pretty sure are just considered buses here) down to Euston Train Station, one of the major London railway stations where we had scheduled to pick up all of our train tickets we had ordered online for the remainder of our trip through the UK.

As we neared the Railway station we spotted a fantastically beautiful building and hopped off about two stops short to get a look at it.

A gorgeous Victorian building, the St. Pancras Hotel is connected to the International Eurail Station with rooms starting at 400 British pounds per evening.

We stepped inside for a quick glance at the interior, and although the doorman was quite polite, it was QUITE obvious that we were NOT guests of the hotel. Looking around it seemed that most of the people sitting and chatting were kinda rich, and let's face it, we're kinda poor, so we slunk back out onto the gritty streets where we belong. Sigh....

We were just a block away from the Euston train station and after weaving in and out of lines of people protesting the new United Kingdom immigration laws we entered the giant station and made our way over to the manned ticket counter and had the person manning the counter help us print out the tickets for four or five future train trips. After that we walked over to the self-serve ticket machines and printed out the last two trips. Easy-peasy! What a great system they have here! This nation is VERY used to rail service, and it shows.

Leaving the station with our tickets in hand we were hungry as only people who purchase train tickets can be and since it was close to 1 PM we headed over to a little Indian Restaurant close by and had a nice lunch.

After lunch we walked over to Regents park, passing through probably the sketchiest part of London we had encountered up to that point, but still feeling uber-safe. We did hide the camera to look a little less touristy though, and honestly I've felt less secure in little Stevenson than we have so far in London.

We had a nice walk through the park and felt like real Londoner's on a day off. Once we had covered much of the park we followed our navigation to the nearest underground station and headed home for an evening of crime television (the British can't seem to get enough of it), and a late dinner of Steak and Ale Pies we purchased at the Whole Foods Grocery right outside the Fulham Broadway Tube station. We really like these English beef pies, like Swanson Pot Pies on steroids with flaky crusts and really good flavorful roast beef and gravy. Ultimate comfort food!