UpMarket

It's not every day that a dog gets a plaque, albeit a bit of a ramshackle one, but a plaque all the same:

Today was Bob's birthday and I had planned on taking him out for breakfast to celebrate, but we ended up doing some spectacular Sunday-morning lazing around the house instead, so breakfast out will have to wait (with the added bonus that, as of today, there's only one week left until the smoking ban kicks in). When Bob requested a particular modest lunch spot instead, we headed down to Brick Lane for Beigel Bake's glorious salt-beef bagels
and Bob proclaimed the chocolate brownie to be "too much chocolate," which is probably the first time I've even heard Mr. Chocoholic claim that he might not be able to finish anything chocolate. (Of course, being the birthday boy, he somehow found room to polish it off.) After our delicious streetside lunch, we wandered down Brick Lane, which was quite busy with the usual last stallholders and crowds of Brick Lane Market, as well as people out to see the latest installment of Free Range.
Photography was the medium of the current displays, and we wandered through a few buildings, where we got a good look at the photos
and the street below.
Last time I was at Free Range, I mentioned wanting to try out the Truman Brewery's Sunday UpMarket, so today we headed in that direction, past the permanent displays of cars in various states of disarray, just beyond the car park ("That's not a good incentive for parking there," Bob said):
The UpMarket turned out to be fantastic,
with a wonderful combination of independent designers
and tempting food. One of the first stalls we saw was one selling Japanese food, including summer ices, edamame salads, and, yes, sushi. When I saw these lovely inari (deep-fried tofu) pockets stuffed with sushi rice, egg, salmon, one edamame (soy) bean, and a perfect carrot flower, I had to buy some:
They were delicious, with a wonderful mix of sweet, sour, salty, and bitter; the sushi rice was seasoned perfectly. When it's Bob's birthday in Vancouver, I always take him out for sushi dinner, but since we have yet to find eat-in sushi here whose quality and price make us happy, we were very pleased with our little sushi treats--and it allowed me to still technically buy Bob sushi for his birthday! At the very back of the market, we had one more small treat:
Seasoned and fried rice balls with a bit of nori at the base, perfect for holding the hot rice while you eat it, these onigiri were deliciously salty and crunchy. Strangely enough, the UpMarket was the first London market we've encountered that featured a number of stalls selling Japanese prepared foods, and we wished we were less full from lunch so that we could try many of the other Japanese temptations, as well as the great-looking curries and salads. In the end, moderation won out and we decided to make our next UpMarket visit on empty stomachs. After we left the market, we continued walking through the East End, encountering more of my favourite shutters
and an unusual view of the Gherkin:
We stopped by Whitechapel Gallery, which is currently accessible via this great alleyway while they undergo renovations,
and then slowly made our way up to Camden Arts Centre for what we thought would be a relaxing sit in their lovely café (which turned out to be a hectic scramble for a table, since there was a performance in the garden today) and a peek at the current exhibits which close later this week. After supper and more wandering in the on-and-off rain that followed us around all day, we decided it was time to get out of the rain (and wind!) and get home. "But the weather's always nice on my birthday," Bob lamented, and in Vancouver, that's true, but London didn't seem to cooperate this year. In the end, even though I had planned on taking Bob on a London Walk for his birthday (he decided to wait for better weather before taking me up on my offer), we had a good day of our own London walking. By the time we got home, a bit chilled, the unseasonable weather was a good excuse for Bob to warm up by digging into one of the two ales that I got him as part of his birthday present: Stinger ended up being the birthday ale, and although Bob was a bit worried about the promised "tongue tingling," it turned out to be more marketing alliteration than injurious side-effect. Too bad it wasn't a month ago, though: Bob could have made his ale-drinking part of this very odd special week!