It's 7 pm and we're sitting in a pub in South Kensington, waiting for the World Cup match between USA and Ghana to start. At the moment they're showing tennis from Wimbledon, not many people here yet but the place is slowly becoming crowded.

After yesterday's PJ gig (Toni will write about that in a separate text) we were too tired to even speak, so there was zero energy to write the blog. Thus I will shortly try to run through what was going on yesterday before the Hyde Park show.

As Toni wrote before, we're staying at a small hostel called Astor Kensington near Gloucester Road tube station. We chose the location because the hostel is pretty close to Hyde Park and we wanted to be able to walk home after the concert. Good choice, having seen the tens of thousands of people trying to fit in the tube station after Pearl Jam finished their set. The hostel is not fancy (which hostel is?!?) but we do have a room all for ourselves and a clean bed. That's all we need. Haha, I will need to write a “travel for less” blog post at some point – I've become pretty good at it! I quess I (nowadays we) are traveling quite a lot, but when you know where to save, you can easily travel the world every now and then. You just need to set your standards a bit lower – no Hyatt or Hilton, but cheaper hostels and small hotels other travelers recommend. Takes a bit time to plan but is totally worth it. The money saved on sleeping can be used for smth more fun (says a woman whose dearest hobby is sleeping. Well, you know what I mean!).

Oops, back to Friday morning: after enjoying the hostel's decent breakfast (decent for a hostel: toast, jam, cheese, ham, cereal, milk, fruits & coffee) we bought the day tickets for the tube and hopped on the subway to go to Camden Town. Btw, whenever you come to London and think about buying a single ticket for the tube – don't! A single journey is 4,00 pounds while a day travel card is 5,60... we bought single ones on our way from the airport and couldn't believe our eyes!

Our station, Gloucester Road

At 9.30 am Friday morning Camden Town still missed its crowds. Most of the shops opened only at 10 or 11 so we had a lot of time just to walk around the narrow alleys which would later become the packed shopping traps.

After 11 it was time to continue the tour to Leicester Square. It was almost time for lunch and I had read about this small, modest but delicious Thai restaurant near Leicester Square which I wanted to find. On our way there we met Mr. Charlie Chaplin (see the pics) and Toni had his first English beer of the trip (see the pics again). Which, by the way, was a) warm and b) there were no bubbles (umm, need to check the word for “hiilihapoton”). Not good, judged Toni. I refrain from saying anything. All beer tastes awful.

Warm beer...

... and too spicy food. Not Toni's day.

After seeing Piccadilly Circus with its “modern” :-) light ads (which were being renovated) we continued walking towards the restaurant through Soho. Found the small restaurant and ordered some beef salad, tom yam kung and prawn coconut curry. All three were delicious for my taste, but poor Toni thought he'd never taste anything again. Ok, it was quite spicy – but nothing one couldn't manage! Highly recommended.

With our bellies full we tried to catch the tube to Westminster station to see Big Ben. However, there was no service on the line so we had to walk. And good thing we did, it was a nice romantic :-) walk by River Thames. Walked pass the London Eye on the other shore, the huge ferris wheel that was missing one of its cabins. I hope that was on purpose and not because some poor tourist group had met their destiny there. We didn't dare to go for a ride. (Haha, talk about daring: there was some new tourist attraction somewhere close to Piccadilly Circus with a walk through corridors with all the famous horror movie characters scaring you there. I SO wanted to go, but Toni hesitated so we had to skip. Chicken!) (NOT TRUE :D -Toni)

The missing ferris wheel cabin

Onwards. After a short walk we passed by Westminster and Big Ben. I have been to London some 10 times but the only time I've seen Big Ben before was when I was 15 and traveled to a language course to Southern England by bus. We did a one day stop in London then and of course the sightseeing tour was included. After that I've concentrated on smth else than sightseeing, so with Toni being here the first time it was fun to do the basic ones again!

Continued walking towards Buckingham Palace. The palace behind the fences isn't too spectacular. I'm not sure if the queen was home but two men were on guard in their traditional red and black costumes. It's a shame we won't have time to see the changing of guards on this trip, too few mornings (= only tomorrow) left.

B-ham 

Hmm, what else. We were deadly tired from walking (and I because of my 4-hour sleep the previous night, I always tend to sleep lousily in a new place before I get used to the room & bed!) so we headed back to the hostel. I had an hour nap while Toni blogged and showered.

*insert some incoherent, over-excited blabbering about the PJ gig here* (see below)

After the gig I had a certain kebab restaurant in mind which we decided to check out. We still had to walk back to the hostel (as explained earlier, the tube was packed) and this place was on the way. “Bosphorus Kebab” was rated among one of the top not-michelin-star restaurants of the city in Tripadvisor. Mmm, our kind of place, we thought.

After a looong walk and passing some nice pubs (which we tonight have now returned to) we found the kebab place. It turned out to be one of those take-out restaurants with only two tiny tables outside. Well, we could've lived with that and taken the food out BUT.... the portions we saw people having HAD NO SAUCE ON THEM! The same thing we observed in Istanbul last spring: the Turkish people, they don't do sauces with kebabs. Only the Iskender kebab is sure to have tomato and yoghurt sauce on it and they didn't have Iskender here. I mean, who eats their kebab with no sauce? Not us, so we decided to skip eating here. No matter if the portion has the best meat and side dishes, if it doesn't have sauce on it, we'll skip.

Walking through the posher hoods of the city, the district of Notting Hill, we finally reached Gloucester Road, our home station. Burger King there was still open, so we settled for some BG meals. At this point, I believe, we had walked some 15 kilometers today (at least!) so the next thing we knew was we were crawling home, falling on our bed and passing out.

Mmmmm.... Daddy burger and his son

Today's main interest was the Portobello Road with its flea market, but I will write about that later on. At the moment people are not liking me for sitting on one of the best spots in the pub at front of the TV with the soccer game on. I'd better concentrate on that for a while. Ghana leads USA 1 to 0, second half is left.

- Laura

SEEING PEARL JAM by Toni:

“My expectations for the gig were sky high, but still Pearl Jam so was much better than I ever would have dared to dream. The band was on fire and really seemed to be enjoying themselves, the setlist was perfect and long (they played 2 h 15 min), and the audience was so into it. I've never heard the crowd singing along to the songs so loud as last night.

My personal highlights were... hmmm, dunno... there were just too many great songs to mention. A big bunch of tunes from Ten: Porch, Why Go, Even Flow, Once, Alive and Black, which brought a tear to my eye with it's beautiful ending. Other favourites were Just Breathe, State of Love and Trust, Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town, Go... I really could go on forever.

Pearl Jam releases every single live performance of theirs as a live album through their fan club, and I'm definitely getting a copy of last night's show.

Probably never seen a band rock so hard, they really gave it a 110%, never seen (and heard!!!) the audiende so psyched (at some points it really seemed that all the 60 000+ people were singing along at the same time with their fists in the air), and never been so psyched myself on any gig before. All in all, hands down the best gig I've seen in my life so far, easily.

- Toni”

There were a couple of people there in Hyde Park

The Excitement

Hyde Park after the show