London Village - It's Not Blood, It's Cherryade

I may have made two mistakes. The first (in fact, the second, chronologically-speaking, but I didn’t discover the first until after the real first, so it comes first. Okay? I can draw a diagram if needed…) was that I stopped moving. Having been up since 6am, walking all over London for five hours getting through my list of things to do, I thought I’d reward myself by checking in shortly after two. Yes, that was a mistake. After falling asleep, I didn’t drag myself out of bed until five, requiring a short trip to Waitrose to pick up a few things for a quick dinner.

(they have borage leaves! I can make a real proper authentic Pimm’s! But I’m getting ahead of myself)

The second mistake was bringing my iPad charger instead of my iPhone one. “I can charge both, if necessary!” Well, my iPhone has been sitting on charge for about an hour now, and the battery indicator hasn’t moved at all. And of course, knowing that I could charge it up in the hotel, I’ve been using it today with impunity, meaning that I currently only have enough power to last me to the Garage and back. Luckily, my plans for tomorrow mean that I don’t really have to use it for navigation, but still, I wanted to take pictures and things! Pointless Twitter updates!

Anyway, today. After getting into London, I decided to head to Buen Provecho, as I’d been reading that they often run out of certain items during the lunch rush. It was supposed to open at 11am, so I, being fashionably late, sauntered up at 11:05…

…and then spent the next forty minutes wandering up and down Lower Marsh market waiting for it to open. I should have gone to the South Bank, I suppose, but I didn’t want to run the gauntlet of the charity debit debit task force out on the streets, so I wandered, explored a park, came back, wandered some more, went into a rather bleak second-hand bookstore, came back, wandered some more, until at last I got to sample what’s been called the best Mexican in London.

I really have been spoiled by America. It was good, yes, and better than anything else I’ve had in Britain, but you could pick any taco truck in Durham and get something that would outclass it considerably. Yes, I’ve turned into one of those people. I’m sorry.

Then, back to Oxford Street to do a little bit of shopping. Or rather, trying desperately to hold onto my willpower in the Apple Store. The iPhone 4 was screaming to be bought, but I was strong. It hurt putting it back in the holder, mind you. So shiny. So bright, such a wonderful display, and luckily for Apple, you can’t make any calls on it inside the shop, so you can’t try and short out the aerial.

Running away from shiny pieces of technology, I turned to another of the reasons for coming to London: checking out a few of the chocolatiers in the area. I had three on my list, and made it to two: Rococo and L’Artisan Du Chocolat (but, given the giant reset button that got pushed on my visa application yesterday, I’ll be back to cover the one I missed and perhaps a few others another time).

Rococo’s design draws on the classic British sweet shop style, with lots of different sweets on offer as well as just their organic chocolate bars (chocolate coins, boiled sweet roses, etc.). I left with six 20g sampler bars (hey, it was buy 5 and get 1 free!), of which I can already tell you that the Earl Grey bar is pretty tasty. I’m also curious about how their violet and blackcurrant bonbon tastes…

L’Artisan Du Chocolat, on the other hand, is all white and modernist. And located in an even more expensive part of London (Sloane Square!). I’m guessing that they enrobe their chocolates rather than using a mold - they’re so tiny! Their presentation boxes need a bit of work, though - by the time you got to the 50 piece box in the shop, they were just filled with chocolates in a rather unattractive higgly-piggly fashion. I got two fusion bars: white chocolate with lumis, and a dark chocolate bar with orange blossom & orchid. I should have got some of the sea salt caramel balls too. Still, there’s always next time.

And now, I should probably make a start to get to the Garage. Los Campesinos! awaits!