5/4 Camden Market, Hampstead Heath andHolly Bush, Leicester Square

Tuesday morning found us taking our time with our emails, blogs and pictures to review.  About 11 we decided to go to Camden Lock on the Regents Canal and the Camden Market.  Wow, what a disappointment for me.  I found the Camden market to be dirty with booth after booth displaying T-shirts with filthy pictures and remarks on them, junky, cheap products mass produced by China and India.  Those countries who are contracted to produce that filth must think we are just like it.  Mothers with young children, rings in their noses and tattoos all over.  How do their children grow up with any sense of propriety or whatever?  I must be too Presbyterian or something but I couldn't stand the place so I asked John, who had wanted to come to Camden, if we had to stay any longer.  I just really hated what I was seeing.  I'd much prefer to stick my head in the sand and pretend it's not there!  We agreed that the area wasn't at all what we had expected and decided to take a bus to somewhere else. 

We spotted one to Hampstead Heath and hopped on.  (We are getting so cosmopolitan!)  Hampstead is a lovely village northwest of London where Ellen used to live and where I stayed with her for a month in 1992. It has a heath - a large natural area - of over 790 acres.  It's like walking in the countryside even though you are in the confines of a large city.  When the bus stopped at the edge of the heath, we wanted to head over it to Hampstead and we had to keep asking people as we ventured along which direction to head so we wouldn't be meandering around with no success in reaching our destination.  When you get to the top, you can see London and pick out landmarks like St. Paul's which in this picture I believe is the little tiny bump just to the right of the rectangular building which is right in the middle of the skyline.

Anyway, we did have a destination in Hampstead!  When I was staying with Ellen in 1992, John was with DuPont and was sent to Ireland on business.  He was able to visit me in Hampstead while on his trip and in walking around the village,  we stumbled upon a pub off the beaten path called The Holly Bush which was still being lit by gas lanterns!!!  We couldn't believe it then and we wanted to see if it was still being lit by gas now.  We did find it (again by asking strangers until one finally knew what we were talking about) but unfortunately it was now lit by electricity for insurance reasons and didn't have near the ambience it had back then.  The light fixtures were the same but electrified.  And there were two bright spots over the bar that were shining in my eyes!  Remember!!  Lighting can be everything.  A short visit was enough;  going back is hard.

We found a bus heading back toward Hammersmith and along the way decided to get off in Leicester Square just to see what it was like.  It's a beautiful space, a small square like many in London.  But this square had elephants!!  (See the light green one on the right?)

That's right - four of them- but they weren't much bigger than a very large pig!  And they were painted by talented artists as a fundraiser for saving the Asian elephant.  They will be auctioned off - all 250 of them - to raise the money.  We have been spotting them all over London.  It's been fun.

Then we walked to Trafalgar Square and even went into The National Gallery with the intent to stay awhile but it was already 5:00 and we had been walking for about 5 hours.  It was time to head home.  Riding the buses on the top decker is fun and we love to drive the streets of London.  This time we took a "new" route - for us anyway - and we had great views of the London Eye and drove right by Parliament and Westminster Abbey.  Believe it or not, we have been here for 5 weeks and haven't even been into that part of the City, I guess because we have been there several times before.  My, we are getting blase', aren't we?