London, Light Globes... and keen for my next adventure

Well, isn´t London just trying to be super environmentally friendly all of a sudden. Everywhere there are posters telling you that every coke can or empty water bottle that you recycle will save energy. Being environmentally conscious is certainly the flavour of the month.. or year... In Germany I didn´t see any advertising along those lines but then, they´ve been recycling like crazy for years. Currently some places (since it various from Bundesland to Bundesland, or state) have up to five separate bags of rubbish and recycling. That number of bags doesn't fit in kitchen anymore!

So anyway, while I travel it always gets me wondering how my piddly little contribution of turning off lights and riding my bike helps when millions of cars drive in this world and the backs of houses in Singapore have airconditioning units stuck on them like mussels on rocks in a harbour (I should have taken a photo of it, but forgot). Anyhow, in the end I don´t think anyone can use that as an excuse. As they say, change must start somewhere.

Back to my travels, London was nice. I was lucky to have nice weather on nearly every day. I was in a huge dilemma of wanting to live here and have the option of earning lots of money, being able to travel with so many countries at your fingertips and experience the music, shops and life in London and Europe... and then the knowledge that what I do at work at the moment isn't really what I want to do and that really, surely, I should start figuring out what I DO want to do, and start something in that direction....

Besides, I´m not sure that I could last in a country where sun is such a valuable commodity that everyone takes their shirts off at the slightest hint of sunshine and starts strutting the streets looking a pasty shade of... umm... moon-tan? Or where they eat... errr... Faggots? hehehe... another childish joke. Sorry.

Right, so in London I hung out on Upper St, had drinks and dinner on Old Street with Mel, hired a car with Scott and Claire and drove to Bath and a

´park the car, run, take photos through a fence, run back to car and DRIVE´ past Stonehenge,

went to Spitalfield Markets with Martin, Jess and Mel, hung out on Clapham Common (surrounded by those shirtless people again), and finally on the last day, went to the Tate and on a self guided walking tour of the ´Notorious East End´.

The walk was funny. Jess and I started at the Tate, then strolled over the bridge in the direction of St Pauls (photo) and then started our walk. It started with sites of the Jack the Ripper murders, then some Kray gangster killing sites and so forth but we also had a significantly long walk through a random bit of London where I´m sure there were real life dodgy things going on. A copper standing outside a police gate, walls with warnings of ´Anti Graffiti paint´and ´anti climb paint´, not so nice dudes standing on street corners doing... nothing. It was a different side of London to the hip and happening places I´d spent the other days in any case.

Finally, I spoke to a girl, friend of Mel's that had been to Peru, Chile and Argentina and did it all on her own so I'm full of new enthusiam and think I might focus more on the Patagonia side of my trip rather than Ecuador, but we'll see. This is definitely a fluid itinerary.

Hasta Pronto! I will see you all in Peru!