6/6/09

I got up around 10:30 (too early) and headed down to Primark after getting the blog together a little. It was packed. I ended up getting another pair of jeans, one black and one green v-neck, underwear, socks, and a green hoodie for £19. Awesome. I'll probably head back there again before I go and maybe get some more jeans and shoes. I stopped in Boots and picked up some soap and printed out the photo of me and Rowand Atkinson for me to try to get him to sign tonight.

I met up with Heidi for tea in Canaby Street and got a pretty awesome berry tea. From there we took the Underground down to Southwark Cathedral. I'm not exactly sure what of it is real and what rebuilt, but it started in 900. Shakespeare's brother is buried there and John Harvard was baptised there. Supposedly it was badly damaged during the wars and much has been redone, but it was still good to go in for a while.

We walked to the Geroge Inn, the only remaining inn left in London, dating from the 1600s. There wasn't much to eat there, so we just sort of walked around it.

We went down to Holbourn area and ate at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, which dates from 1667. Dr. Samuel Johnson (the dictionary guy) lived around the corner and frequented it rather often, as did Dickens, Twain, and Teddy Roosevelt among others. We ate in the Chop Room where Johnson would eat a lot. We ordered a goat cheese and apple salad (amazing) and I had a grilled vegetable Wellington, which is basically vegetables in a crust, also very good. It came with a side salad and they had real dressing, not like fake British packaged dressing. All good.

We walked around the area, stopping to look at The Old Curiosity Shop (which may or may not be the shop that inspired the Dickens book, either way it's the oldest shop in London, pre-fire. We tried to go into the John Sloan Museum around the corner, but that was closed, so we wandered to try to find a place to get me half-birthday cake, ending up back at the Dicken's Cafe. I got a strawberry cheesecake, which was great.

We then walked over to wait for 'Oliver' to get out and get Rowand to sign my photo. He eventually came out and came over to sign, and he said, 'Oh, it's a photo of me.' And started signing it. Right on my face. Then he goes, 'Oh, is that you?' And I was like, 'Yep.' He scribbled basically all over me, losing the whole point of the photo. Fail. But pretty funny.

We left to go try to catch Jerry Springer leaving his show too, but he was long gone so we just walked back.