Friday, April 21/2017

Despite having seven day tube passes, we actually don't go any further than our own neighbourhood, having started with errands that made longer trips pointless. It's an interesting area - central, very near Hyde Park, well connected by tube and bus. Its chief problem is that it's too heavily touristed, which drives prices up, so that there are no downscale pubs and café, as there are in Kilburn and parts of the east end, or probably Brixton, though there are the standard fast food outlets - McDonald's, Burger King, and Subway - in an absolute pinch. Basic filter coffee very cheap at Starbucks - 75p ($1.28 CAD) if you bring your own cup and fairly generous filling of same - but everything else there highly overpriced. Which leads a few of their less easily embarrassed - or more socially unskilled - customers to bring their own snacks and buy only coffee, and occasionally not even that. Not us, obviously, but some of the semi-homeless who exist in London uneasily adjacent to those for whom money is there to spend.