The Sunny East End

Today we hopped on a bus that we've never taken before, since it appeared to head in the general direction of Victoria Park. We were happy to discover that the route's many turns took us right to our intended destination, Lauriston Road at the top of Victoria Park, where we hadn't yet explored. The area around the central roundabout was filled with nice shops, cafés, and a restaurant that's meant to have some wonderful food (the menu in their window looked very promising indeed). My favourite shop was a secondhand-furniture shop, and as I walked toward one particular piece (sort of a full-height, robin's-egg-blue enamel and rich, textured wood kitchen cabinet, with this great door that folded down to create a serving board), Bob said, "Oh oh, you really like that, don't you? We don't have room for that in our flat." "How do you know I like this?" I asked. "I just know" was his only reply, delivered with a smirk. In fact, I did love it, and wistfully opened and closed the various doors and drawers several times before walking away, lamenting our lack of space. From Lauriston Road, we approached the park to find the ice-cream trucks were very busy on this sunny day. Also busy was this little coot who was tending to her very open nest.Bob's titled this photo The Fight,
and this dog waited patiently by the canal for his owners to return.
We left Victoria Park and walked to the V&A Museum of Childhood to glance at their new exhibit of Picasso drawings,

and although there was a nice shadow-animal display at the museum, it wasn't quite as exciting as last night's! Bob did make an admirable dog though:
We stopped in at the beautiful Bethnal Green library (the glass roof, not visible from the front, is wonderful), which always has the best books. Books weren't enough to keep us going though, and we headed down to Brick Lane for another Beigel Bake treat of salt-beef bagels, along with extra bagels and a loaf of fantastic caraway rye to take home. We wandered in the general direction of Hoxton Square, coming across this typical London sight of weathered brick set against all the money represented by the new building rising in the background. As it says on the posters, London is divided. Closer to Hoxton Square, this sculpture of abandoned subway cars perched over us as a reminder of their old route, now under construction. Hoxton Square is quite a lovely greenspace--this view is from White Cube gallery's upper level overlooking the square:
We also browsed in a nearby teeny-tiny, excellent art bookshop that we remembered enjoying when we visited back in 2005. Like a microcosm of London, the bookshop crams an amazing array of topics, viewpoints, and media onto its mish-mash of shelves, nooks, and floorspace.