Greenwich pub "walk"...

On the weekend, we went on a pub "walk". I think this may well just be an attempt to dress up a pub crawl and make it sound mildly legitimate. The theory was that there are a stack of pubs around London that are brilliantly historic and that all kinds of culturally significant things happened in. So if you wander around all day from one pub to the next, and pause every so often to admire the history of the place, then drinking lots and idling away the time is completely justified. So, our pub walk around Greenwich was a roaring success. Here are some of the pubs we "examined" (although I have to admit that the value of admiring the historical significance decreases as the number of pints consumed increases, so I can't really tell you what cool stuff happened in these...):

• Admiral Hardy Tavern
• The Yacht
• The Trafalgar Tavern
• The Cutty Sark Tavern
• Mitre pub
  
• Richard I Tavern
• Ashburnham Arms

Wow, now that I've listed them all out like that I'm pretty impressed we managed to stay vertical all day... although Mark did have a couple of "incidents" on the way home and at home. I think he managed to well and truly convince everyone that Aussies are loud and passionate about their sport anyway... Fortunately, we didn't get any pictures from the day so you only have to be subjected to stories rather than images. It was a great day though - we certainly absorbed a lot of history and culture (you get it by osmosis with the drinking, right?).

On the morning before the pub walk, we went back to check out Portobello Rd markets again, which was great - I don't remember the antique-y things being as interesting last time, we checked out all these cool old prints and maps and stuff (original prints of Tintin and Axterix comics, and hundreds-years-old maps), and all this cool old jewellery - hat pins and brooches and stuff as well as necklaces and watches.

Then Sunday we (read Mark) needed to recuperate after the pub walk, so we did nothing. Or tried to - we went to get a cooked English brekkie to combat the hangover, but ended up finding out that the Marylebone festival (which we'd heard about a few weeks back when we were living in Marylebone) was on that day. So we checked it out, but the best thing was this brilliant group of buskers we saw. There was a dude playing a box (literally, a wooden box he was sitting on) and with a shaker tucked into his shoe-laces so it rattled when he tapped his foot, and another dude playing a cello, and then another guy doing, of all things, tap-dancing. It sounds like a pretty unlikely combination right, but it was actually fantastic. They were these 3 young guys (Ray, just picture your idea of a beatnik) who were basically just playing around with all these rhythms and busking while they were doing it, and they were having a ball. I think it's the best busking I've ever seen. And sorry, no pic of them either.

Then for lunch we had a picnic in Regent's park, with some fantastic rosemary bread we bought at the market, some vintage cheddar and beautiful ripe tomatoes. Couldn't be better! This I do have a photo of - here's Mark watching some of the locals play an impromptu game of soccer, and another macro one of our fantastic bread, cheese and tomato, just cos I can. And then, hangover successfully banished, we stumbled on a brilliant little Italian cafe that actually does great coffee, right in the next block to our apartment. Yay! :) It was a very "authentic" cafe though, which means that they had the soccer on the TV and all the Italian guys in the place (including the guys who owned it) were glued to the TV. Despite his supposed hatred of soccer, Mark's love of sport generally was stronger and so he joined in and glued himself to the TV too. Lucky the great coffee made up for it... :)

Phew! How's that for a novel? I think that pretty much brings us up to date, with the exception of a few bits and pieces that will find their way into the blog at some point or other.