The lay of the land

I have been walking, walking, walking --- putting the different pieces of the London jigsaw together in my head. Now I have a clearer sense of how Angel/Islington (where I'm staying temporarily) connects with Old Street/Shoreditch, connects with Brick Lane/Old Spitalfields Market, connects with Bishopsgate and west to Leicester Square, then down to Trafalgar Square and over to Oxford Circus. Not that this is all of London that I need to know, but it's what I've managed to cover, by bus and on foot, in the first few days of walking neighbourhoods and trying to figure out where I would like to (and can afford to) live.

Yesterday we were at Broadway Market, then moseyed our way down to Hackney City Farm --- where the signs very seriously warn you not to consume any food and drink in the animal pen/pasture areas, lest you pick up stray bacteria --- and over to Columbia Road. Something about Columbia Road really appeals to me, but for a location so not in central London, nor indeed along the way to travel to my university, I wonder if my rental money would be better spent elsewhere.

Today my former student slash friend slash potential flatmate M and I went wandering around St Paul's Cathedral --- where I haven't set foot since 1994 --- and across the Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern. There, we ran smack into the Mayor's Thames Festival, which is officially marketed as an "end-of-summer" festival. This better not mean the end of all the lovely weather and sunny days we've been having.