London: Finally, Deptford

Today I took a little tour to the east, first to see the Canary Wharf Tube station, and then on to Greenwich and Deptford. Greenwich was a bit twee for me, honestly, though the park was dreamy in the perfect heat. Overheard conversation: "Last year, we bought a cottage in Sussex, so lovely, but..." I wondered at the disasters that might have befallen the cottage purchaser, but she and her friends—all three with prams—passed out of earshot before I got the dirt.

Then I moved on to Deptford, a place I've been reading about in various places over the last few years. Deptford High Street completely floored me. It's a treasure-trove of ethnic shops, restaurants, and markets, with a supermarket here and a few one-pound stores there. The cross-section was bewilderingly rich, and frankly I haven't seen any street like it since arriving in London. It's an electric slice of multi-layered London without hipsters—at least for the time being.

And from there I moved on to more central 'hoods to visit hotels for EuroCheapo. What else? I lent my phone to a guy from Kazakhstan who needed to make a quick call. And then I came home and worked on some things.