My Favourite Brewery

I know you're probably all getting bored of hearing this, but London really is a place where turning one way instead of another can lead you into things that you had no idea existed, even in areas that you may think you know relatively well. Today I went down to Brick Lane to check out Free Range, Europe's largest graduate art show, rotating displays over the six weeks at the Old Truman Brewery. While I've noticed the brewery's iconic smokestack from far away and I vaguely remember hearing that it was a hive of interesting shops, I guess I forgot! (That's another challenging aspect of London: keeping track of everything there is to see and do. I'm sure that I've heard of more interesting things and then forgotten to seek them out than all the things that Bob and I have managed to do so far in our adventure . . .) Basically a rabbit warren of indie shops, tempting food, and a fascinating Sunday market, the Truman Brewery is a huge place (eleven acres). I'll have to come back and spend the entire day--ideally on a market day. Today I toured through a few of the exhibits before giving in to my allergies and heading home. (Yes, the summer weather continues today, with the unfortunate side-effect of enormous amounts of cute, fluffy pollen floating through the air, which is making my sinuses cry out for a return to winter.) On my way home, I paused to take this photo of Liverpool Station, with its boards listing the trains, their stops, and relevant platforms:
It wasn't yet the height of rush hour, and this doesn't even look crowded (or confusing) to me anymore, but all the big stations (e.g. Liverpool, London Bridge, Waterloo) can get pretty crazy. The best/ worst is trying to walk through a big station during the evening rush--it's like a badly designed video game where you don't even get the satisfaction of grabbing some gold coins, finding any secret passages, or acquiring any temporary superpowers as rewards for your expert manoeuvres.