London, Day Five

Today began with breakfast in the flat. I had a hearty meal of scrambled eggs, bacon (which was more like ham), and toast with Nutella. Yum!

Then we started the day in Camden. On our way to the market, we came across another one called Stables Market, so we decided to peek around inside. I bought a couple of souvenirs for myself and some friends. It was very similar to Camden market except it was just smaller.

One angle of Stables Market

Purchasing a souvenir shot glass as was requested by my friend Haley from school

We wandered down the rest of the way to Camden Market where we encountered some food delicacies. Our first encounter was with something called a Cronut. It was a donut-shaped pastry but it was made with filo dough (the flaky croissant dough) and it had chocolate drizzled over the top. We need those at home!

Mom and I containing our excitement for the cronut discovery fairly well

The first delicious bite. We both wanted the first bite so we shared it.

We shopped for a little while and then passed an icecream shop that my mom claimed was her favorite ever, so naturally we had to have some. It was really interesting to watch them make it. It was nitrous icecream, so they used nitrogen to make it especially cold and then it evaporates out at the end.

Watching them make it with their crazy machinery

We got Pondicherry vanilla icecream with chocolate syrup and cookie crumbles

Keeping with the theme of food, Camden Lock has a huge section for stands of international food. I don't even think there were multiple stands for one country. I saw one for Ethiopia as well as Colombia. There had to have been at least 50 stands there, each with a different country. I tried some type of Turkish wrap that had beef and spinach in it, which was super delicious and also a gyro that had French fries in it for some reason, also tasty. We just had little samples though, not whole meals. One day, I would like to come back extra hungry and sample from each stand.

We shopped around for a bit in the area, then we decided to head over to Covent Garden, another fun shopping market area. Once we came off the tube, we popped into nando's for a late lunch (it seems like all we have been doing on this trip is eating and shopping).

Nando's was really interesting. It's a Portuguese chicken food chain. I heard about it from Ed Sheeran, who is openly obsessed with the place (he even has a freestyle song about it on Youtube). It was very different from what I was expecting; quite spicy. We had an order of 10 wings to split and some chips (fries) and corn. We sampled most of the sauce flavors, although the medium was spicy enough so we didn't upgrade to the hot. I think it might be somewhat of an acquired taste type of meal because I didn't find myself loving it, yet at the same time, I would like to go back.

The "Garlic Peri Peri Sauce" was my favorite. Not too spicy but with a little added flavor.

After our lunch/snack, we headed into Covent Garden, which was filled with shops, stands, and street performers. We ended up just window shopping and people watching most of the time, although dad did find a book that should be titled "Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Wine," which he has kept his nose buried in since he purchased it.

After the shops closed up, we grabbed some coffee and lounged at the flat until dinner, which was at a restaurant called Monkey Puzzle. I didn't realize that monkeys were so fond of puzzles that they had their own category of them, but whatever floats their boat. I had a bacon cheeseburger, which was really more of a cheeseburger with a piece of ham stuck on top. It was tasty nonetheless though.

We turned into the flat early after dinner to watch last week's episode of Game of Thrones on my tiny laptop screen and get to bed at a decent time.