Day 1-Weird and Weirder

I’m sitting in a patisserie/café called Apostrophe in the Brunswick center, near Bloomsbury and Euston tube stops. My friend and I took a bus then she pointed me down the street while she went somewhere else. I’m eating a couscous de’ legumes. It appears to be laced with harissa here and there and the tiniest zebra striped cherry tomatoes with a meaty texture and the most wonderfully sweet insides. Filled with garbanzo beans and fresh cilantro, broccoli and roasted red peppers, it’s a lovely snack to get me going until I pass out in a few hours. There are oodles of sandwiches which all look divine, but I’m still not doing flour. There is fresh organic apple juice and organic pear juice, coconut macaroons that look like little jabba the huts with fur, big palmiers the size of Dumbo’s ears and some really sub par looking sweets. There were two girls sitting next to me and I asked them for directions. We got to talking, then I asked them about lodging. They gave me some good Web sites. They asked me where I was from, and when I said St. Louis, I was very surprised to hear the one girl say she’d lived there and worked at Boeing. REALLY small world.

There is a place down the way Cruush, a juice bar and soup place (that I think also has falafe, but who doesn’t in London?) I want to check out and Carlucci’s gelateri, as well as another little pastry shop I spotted. Waitrose is a very cool grocery store. Maybe they’re all cool to me simply because they’re not Schnucks or Dierberg’s, but the things they have are mind boggling. Fresh figs as plump as your fist, prepared hummus in sixteen different ways, juices the color of the rainbow (including one with lychee and strawberries), gorgeous salads and 20 kinds of yogurt. The list goes on. Cardoon and dragon fruit…things you can’t find in our neck of the woods.

I went to another grocery, Marks and Spencer, which was very similar. You can buy ready made chicken tikka and butternut squash and couscous salad. It’s convenience food at its best.

I got my mobile phone. It’s hot pink. I paid 15 pounds more for it and I’m happy for my decision. Calls are free to receive, and only 10 cents for me to call out. Not bad. But if you want me to call you for any length of time, give me some money when I get back, will ya? It’s freakin expensive here. Even if it’s a buck or two, it will be nice to get some money, not shell it out like it’s my blood.

It’s totally cold here, by St. Louis standards and people are still sitting outside, sipping cappuccinos like it’s a summer day. I have on a turtleneck, a sweater jacket and a light coat and it’s just good enough. Better than the 100 degree heat from my hometown.