A Slow Day of Wandering (27 January)

Since we were still struggling with our internet access today, we decided to walk over to the library to use the internet for a bit before starting our day. On our way, we came across a wonderful building, which appeared to have been converted from a pub into a few large flats:

The building and its situation at the corner of the block are wonderful and after doing more than our share of peeking in the windows, we moved on.
These signs are strewn around our neighbourhood and I've been meaning to write about them for some time. The first time I saw them, I had no clue what "next match" meant. Now usually football has no impact on my life--except for the year we lived in Toronto during the world cup, at the intersection of the Korean, Italian, and Portuguese neighbourhoods, and in the year that Korea did very well. The noise! The flags! The rivalries! The taxi companies that wouldn't dare come into our neighbourhood on the day of a big game, which happened to be the same day that I had to get to the airport to go to Vancouver to find us an apartment! But here in London, football is once again in my life: since we live relatively close to Arsenal's Emirates Stadium, match days mean traffic jams and parking nightmares. On this particular day, those transportation headaches weren't in our neighbourhood, but numerous matches were being played around London, and we ended up being slowed down everywhere we went. Add to that the usual tube closures on winter weekends and it was definitely a slow-moving day!

After we finished at the library, I noticed another instance of my favourite London sight--a barely legible remnant of an old sign on the side of a brick building:

And after fighting the transportation crowds, we finally ended up at our destination, Sir John Soane's Museum, only to find that a very long queue was persistently growing longer and longer. We were shocked, since we hadn't yet encountered this type of line at any London museum, and had only recently heard of this particular one. Curious but realistic, and mindful of the museum's fast-approaching closing time, we decided to come back another day. We wandered through Green Park,
saw some action at Buckingham Palace,
signed up for library cards at the Chelsea library,
and fought the immense crowds at Harrods for a look at their food hall--which I must say was a bit disappointing in its tackiness, but definitely an experience.
After our wanderings around the West End, we headed back to the East End for a yummy Vietnamese dinner at a packed-out restaurant where every dish coming out of the kitchen looked and smelled better than the last. I wonder what teeny-tiny morsel the price of our delicious dinner would have bought at Harrods?