May Bank Holiday - London, Monday 5 May 2008

On Sunday Jodi and I tried to get tickets to a west end theatre show but unfortunately they don't run on Sundays so instead we headed with Evelyn to Camden to check out the markets. Camden is notorious for it's crazy people and shops and we weren't disappointed. There were so many people around and plenty of them were goths, emos, punks and other forms of interesting characters.

The markets themselves weren't the greatest as may of the shops sold things that catered to the Camden style which wasn't really for me. So after a bit of walking around we found a spot on a table above a starbucks and chilled there for a few hours people watching.

Monday was a bank holiday (that's a public holiday in NZ speak) so Jodi and I headed to Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guard. The crowds were incredible, I couldn't believe how many people there were! The actual event itself was nothing to rave about, the guards do a bit of a march up the street which is cool to watch and you get to check out the police on horseback and all the different types of guards. Then they head into the palace grounds and you really can't see much at all. A bit of pacing, plenty of music from the guard band and the odd bit of shouting, then it's all over and the guards who are going off duty march back out again. But the atmosphere was cool so glad we checked it out.

In the afternoon we met up Jordan and his girlfriend Nienke for a picnic in St James Park. We bought the food, they bought the wine. Unfortunately they didn't bring a cork opener! Whoops :) So after a few walks around nearby picnic groups (with no luck) we sent Jordan off in search of a supermarket. Found one but no corkscrew so he bought 2 more bottles of wine. We finished those off and managed to find a corkscrew off a new picnic group near us and opened up the other 2 bottles of wine. Then Jodi's flatmate Shannon joined us, and yep you guessed it, bought more wine! So as you can imagine we all had a fantastic time in the park drinking wine, having some great food, soaking in the sun (Jodi & Nienke both got a little burnt!) and just catching up in general for over 5 hours. It was great!