London, like most big cities, is always seen as being super busy and full of people (rush hour on the tube is one great example). While living in London, there is a compulsion to go away outside of London (some nice European town perhaps?) in order to get away from the noise of the city, but there is actually a veritable array of places inside where you can find peace and quiet. At the end of the road where I live, for example is Hyde Park.

London has an amazing number of parks all spread throughout the various suburbs and most of them are quiet lush and substantially sized. One such park is Holland Park, one that I am lucky enough to walk by on the way to work everyday. Despite the larger number of times I have passed it, I had never actually really entered the park, so yesterday I went for a quick stroll into its vast greenery. Like most parks here, I’ve been completely surprised by how big it is, and the number of things it contains. It has a number of football (read: soccer) fields, an open air theatre, an Orangery, a mansion, and even a fully operating Youth Hostel.

It also houses the Kyoto Gardens, my most favourite part of the park. This place was first built in 1991 as part of the Japanese Festival, but has been touched up a couple of times since then. Like most other Japanese gardens, this one is set about a carp-filled pond constantly refreshed by a cascading waterfall and surrounded by well trimmed shrubbery, all giving this place a true feeling of tranquillity. It was nice simply sitting there, absorbing the sun’s warmth and indulging in the quietness of the area. My other highlights of the visit included the huge peacocks walking around and the live black rabbits jumping around in the bushes.

Yesterday I made it down to the Brixton markets, located on the southside of the Thames in London. Brixton itself is a suburb of London teeming with culture dissimilar to other parts of London. Here the Caribbean influences are strong as you can tell from the common things that they sell in most of the stalls including plantains, Cassava, Jamaican fruits and vegetables, various chillis, jerk seasoning and jerk sauce. The markets extend from two major streets (at least from what I saw) and form an almost circular path from either exit of the Brixton tube.

I would best describe the markets, as markets you might do your grocery shopping at if you were a local, with many of them selling bric-a-brac, utensils and varying amounts of clothing. Countless fruit and vegetable stalls abound, all with a noticeable Caribbean influence, though you’re not going to find any food like you might at the Borough markets. Butchers also make up a vast majority of the sidewalk stores as you pass through the markets, and what looked like good quality meat for decent prices is readily available. Whole carcasses of animals hang from hooks in the butcher, and unlike most traditional butchers, all parts of the animals are up for sale. In fact I would be surprised if I didn’t see a butcher there not selling chicken feet, pig’s trotters, or pig intestines.

For lunch I was hoping to hit a Caribbean cafe but I didn’t across one so I ended up stopping in at an organic café called Rosie’s. You can find this café tucked away in a little arcade just off Market Row. The three small tables outside effectively double the sitting capacity but take-away ciabattas and salads are easy enough to eat. This café, and I suppose deli, has mostly Spanish type food and serve great coffee. My sun bleached tomato, mozzarella and spinach toasted ciabatta went down a treat!

This week’s theme seems to be about people moving away, onto different things. My (now ex-) housemate is leaving for Australia, a work mate is rolling off my project, and another work mate has left to work for Google. Last night was the first of this trio, and the rest of my housemates and I went to go see Megan off at the Drunken Monkey in Shoreditch.

Located on a corner of Shoreditch High Street, the Drunken Monkey is aptly named, and best described as an Asian Tapas bar. The roof is nice and tall, with long dark tables making it appear very spacious. The ambient music is not excessively loud to drive you to shout at each other, and the red-lantern lit bar adds to the Asian atmosphere without being especially tacky. The bar serves up a number of wicked cocktails all themed appropriately, and all of them are a good laugh with names such as Monkey Mojito, Simian Features, and most especially the Monkey Nuts.

The reason I describe this place as an Asian Tapas bar is because they serve Dim Sum all throughout the evening, some in typical bamboo baskets, while others plated in a fanciful manner on white polished plates. I had already eaten dinner, so I didn’t try any of the particular dishes and although they are priced higher than what you pay at a proper Chinese restaurant, it really did fit in well with the entire place and lots of people were indulging in it.

Overall a pretty nice bar that I would definitely return to.

Details: The Drunken Monkey
Found On: 222 Shoreditch High Street, London, E1 6PJ
Contactable On: 020 7392 9606

Christopher Wren contributed a lot to London’s landscape and seeing as yesterday was a rare winter day in London (bright blue skies, warm sun, but of course still really cold), I thought it would be good to go and visit another one of this famous buildings, the Monument to the Great Fire of London.

The Monument is 202 feet high (62 metres), apparently the distance it is from the origin of the fire that first started the Great Fire of London. There are 311 steps in a winding corridor that you have to climb to reach the very small viewing platform. At the top of the monument is a Gilded Urn of Fire, representative of the Great Fire. The bottom of the monument has a number of inscriptions and drawings depicting the events that conspired during this time.

The city maintains this historic building and there is a very small entrance fee of £2 for adults and £1.50 for children (up from the 6p it was when it first opened).

The Monument can be found closest to Monument Station (Central/Northern Line), or by foot on Monument Street, London, EC3R 8AH.

Despite have lots of signs even a bus stop named after it, I really think they should have called them the Remains of the Temple of Mithras instead of just The Temple of Mithras.

As you can see from the photo below, there really isn’t much of a temple. This one was moved (almost all of these were below the ground) was moved to Temple Court on Queen Victoria Street and historians believe that it was built in the middle of the 2nd Century AD.

After having a delicious breakfast at 202 again and meeting up with Kath from Oxford, we went to visit the Tate Modern down at Southbank. It is a huge warehouse building directly opposite the Millenium bridge and located next to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Entry is free except ot some special exhibits, but the rest of the collections are free to view. The gallery shows some interesting collections such as the Embankment structure by Rachel Whiteread pictured below.

Other collections were a little disappointing to me, but mainly because they were far too abstract for me to understand or even try to understand. A good example is one in which red paint was “violently” thrown at a canvas so that it would achieve some message which I couldn’t quite get immediately out of a canvas simply covered in red paint. My most favourite of the collection was the Andy Warhol room that showed a number of his works (including the Elvis Presley and Jackie Kennedy ones) and described his interesting motivations behind them.