#my least favorite thing about unplanned series is the way things just Conveniently Pop Up As Needed

[curiosity-killed]

i still think httyd2 is crap but httyd3 gets me every time

[roamingholiday]

Sunday, July 16th 2017

I did absolutely nothing (well, I slept) in the morning, and was actually staring at the posts from the last couple of days thinking oh god another boring day this is getting predictable that’s not good. Then, very suddenly, the day stopped being boring, which was quite a nice change of pace.

When we were waiting in line for the London Eye for hours and hours on end (okay, like, an hour and a half, but time in lines moves half as fast as normal time, everyone knows that), we spent a lot of time staring longingly and also with much hatred at the very short line for the Thames ferry, and saying to each other, “Riverboat cruise. Riverboat cruise. We should do a riverboat cruise.”

We then proceeded to. Uh. Not do that for a week, and then very suddenly decide to Do That in a thirty second discussion on Sunday afternoon.

So we headed out towards the Eye, which was the only place we actually knew had tickets for the riverboat cruise. We didn’t really know where it was going? We didn’t know how long it would take? We didn’t know what the weather was going to be like and whether spending time sitting in the open-air top of a moving boat was going to be at all a pleasant experience? We didn’t eat lunch? We just got on the tube and left, with only the vaguest idea of where we were going?

It was unusually unplanned, is the point.

The not eating lunch came back to bite us, actually, much quicker than the rest of the unplanned bits did (the weather thing in particular becomes significant later on, because it’s London and of course it does), so we were sidetracked almost immediately after leaving the tube, halfway to the London Eye, by a food fair thing happening on the sidewalk. I have no idea what it was, or if it’s a permanent thing, or if there was some kind of theme going on, but it was there, and there were many options, and everything smelled absolutely amazing.

By which I mean that everything smelled like the curry from this one place, which conveniently smelled amazing.

It was rather hot, and there were no seats in the shade, so I didn’t actually end up getting curry, though I seriously considered it. I probably would have gotten it, and damn the heat anyway, but one of my friends got some, and I stole some of her’s, so I was satisfied.

I ended up getting a galette (which is a term that I just spent five minutes googling variations of because I couldn’t quite remember what it was called and kept getting results for gillette razors, which I definitely did not eat), which is a gluten free crepe made with buckwheat flour, which is conveniently what this little crepe stand was using to make all of their savory options. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely wanted a sweet crepe, and I assumed that I could ask for a galette with a sweet filling, if I wanted both sweet and gluten free, but I figured that probably protein is important, seeing as we were going on a boat ride that was going to last lord knows how long, and so far all I’d eaten was a bowl of rice krispies. So I got a ham, cheese, and spinach galette. It was very, very good.

Despite a total lack of planning, the riverboat cruise was a surprising success. We bought tickets for a hop-on-hop-off 24 hour ride (which, by the way, with an oyster travel card, is six pounds cheaper, which is nice), got on the boat, and just…. didn’t get off. There are five stops to get off at, between Westminster and Greenwich, and we stayed on the boat until Greenwich, where the boat stopped.

We had about an hour and a half until the last boat left, so we had some time to wander, and ended up at the Greenwich Vintage Market.

It’s genuinely one of the most adorable places I’ve ever been. Three rows of stalls, with two aisles splitting them, full of little antiques and homemade knickknacks and trinkets, being sold by their makers, for the most part, all crammed into what felt like, and probably was, an alleyway. Adorable. 

I was tempted by this keychain, because I think my brother would certainly agree, but at the end of the day I got a pair of earrings, because I wear earrings way more often than I remember to keep my keys on a keychain.

We all ended up buying something. I love my earrings, but the coolest thing we got was from a stall that made gorgeously intricate pop-up cards.

They were stunning.

Of course, the instant we got to the open-air market it started to drizzle, and while it was fairly easy to ignore underneath the awnings of the stalls, once we left it got fairly irritating fairly quickly, particularly as several of us were carrying delicate paper cards that we’d rather not get wet.

We ended up in a series of ridiculous souvenir shops while we killed time until the arrival of the boat, where we discovered the following gems:

Does America have a copyright on Rocky Road?

I’m just super amused that someone somewhere got their friends a matching set of royalty mugs, plus, apparently, one mug for their least favorite friend. The Maid. Honestly.

I can’t believe they have two different versions of one name, and no Trixie. How rude.

The boat trip back was quieter than the one there. Everyone was tired, the boat was less packed, and even though the rain had stopped by then, the sky was grey and the air was damp and cold. 

I did actually take pictures on the way back, which I neglected to do on the way there because there were far more people and my seat was rather awful.

Here you can see the American Embassy.

Here you can see the current sitting US president’s home.

Here you can see the London Eye, which I took not a single picture of a week ago, when I was actually on it, so here’s the Eye. Badly photographed. On a day 100% grayer and rainier than the gorgeous, blue sky sun shining day when I was actually there.