Borough Market

Despite being one of the world's largest cities in the world, London has many great local markets, including Borough market, close to the landmark London Bridge. Actually, it's directly below London Bridge station, so as you shop, you can hear the trains passing by overhead! There is a variety of prepared foods to choose from, including Greek, Indian, German, Spanish and Swedish offerings. Walk thorough a small doorway brings you through to the market area where you can get all sorts of local specialty foods, including hand made chocolates ... and baby haggis!

London Summer

Summer officially arrived sometime in early July ... and promptly ended a few days later! The last few weeks have been a series of cool nights (about 10 degrees) and rainy days. From what I've been told, this is what I can come to expect for the London 'summer'. Despite the cool weather, I'm still getting my daily dose of high temperatures, thanks to the London subway. With no air conditioning, the breadbox of wheels gets hotter and hotter as the day goes on. By the time the dinner bell rings, the subway is packed with people and temperatures have crept up to about 35 degrees ...

Work is starting to get busier and busier, with many new projects on the go. We're coming into the August holiday season which is much worse that it is in Canada. Just about everyone take off 2-3 weeks with the family, so it's near impossible to get projects moved forward ...

This coming weekend is the first weekend since arriving that I don't have anything planned. A good chance to relax and to recharge.

Our apartment ... revealed!

Here are some 'before' pictures of our apartment . Pictured here are the kitchen and the living room. Don't be fooled - the two rooms face each other so the apartment is not much bigger than what is in the photos! At the time this photo was taken, we only had a small below counter refridgerator which broke down during the very first week! Our landlady was great and replaced it right away with a full size fridge/freezer. Not as big as in Canada, but huge by UK standards.

The apartments here in the UK are definitley smaller compared to Canada. Many are converted houses (as with ours) which have been subdivided into individual apartments. The appliances are sized to match!

Saturday morning Cartoons

Ah, gone are the good old days of Saturday morning cartoon. Transformers , the smurfs, or I would even settle for sponge bob. But alas, we possibly have the smallest TV in the UK. It's so old, it comes complete was a circular aerial and can only pick up four channels! BBC1 is the best of the lot, so I'm now watching the Saturday morning news, which by the way, is only 15 minutes long, but that doesn't stop them from repeating it over and over and over ....

Happy Canada Day!

Enjoyed a few pints of beer in Trafalgar Square to celebrate Canada Day with SL and my friend CD. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the celebrations are quite elaborate, especially considering that I'm not in Canada. The entire square was roped off and there was a hugh stage set up with that announcer guy from CBC as emce. In true Canadian style, they had a huge beer tent set up (charging almost twice the price as at the pubs!). While we waited in line, we were entertained by a young 'lad', probably no older than 14, trying to get a few pints for him and his 'mates'. He didn't get to far as he was carded by the server but you gotta give him points for trying! The weather was fantastic, getting up to 28 degrees. Apparently, this is as hot as it gets over here! Many people were in festive red and white and I did my bit by wearing a red tie.

Sadly, no fireworks (like on Parliament Hill) and no beavertail stands, but hey, they had a Tim Horton's stall set up!