How to Survive in London on £3 a day...

Yes, it's possible...provided you have a Travelcard, first, that is.

Ok, so last night I decided to check out another big salsa place in London - simply called (appropriately enough) Salsa! (complete with exclamation point...hehehe). It's a lot more lively than Ronnie Scott's, which I think is for more serious salsa dancers. Salsa! (I love that exclamation point) plays a lot more merengue, samba, and club mixes, and has a much larger, younger crowd. Good points: live band, bad points: too much smoke (it's also a crowded bar), too crowded of a dance floor, feels too much like a hookup scene. So yeah, left that pretty quickly. I had a lot of fun while dancing, but was pretty miserable when I wasn't. That's what sucks about going dancing alone - there's no table of friends to retreat to when you get bored with dancing. Plus, I lost one of my earrings - my favorite pair, the one I got with my sister - and that made me really upset. So not the best of evenings.

Luckily, today was a lot better. I had to switch rooms (still within Goodenough College - and it IS pronounced "good enough" - go figure), so I woke up early, then headed out to an early Mass at Westminster Cathedral - not the famous Abbey, but right down the road. It's gorgeous inside - the ceiling was supposed to be covered in mosiac tile, but instead is just a dark brick, which makes an amazing contrast with the light streaming in through the high windows and the light marble decorations below. Plus, I went to the Mass sung in Latin by the choir, so that was especially beautiful. After that, I had some proper tea and biscuits in the parish hall, and took a walk around the (gorgeous) neighborhood, in which I found this great vintage store where I wanted to buy every hat and every pair of shoes (they had Christian Dior velvet pumps!) but restrained myself. Prices were pretty reasonable, though - I grabbed a flier and will probably be back.

I headed off next for St. James Park, which leads to Buckingham Palace. All pretty impressive, but the park is a nature preserve for a huge amount of birds, and they insist on doing flybys RIGHT over the heads of pedestrians. So that was nice, if mildly terrifying. One thing that's interesting is that several plants and flowers are still (already?) blooming, because the winter's not quite as cold as it is in NY/Boston. I'm used to seeing everything dead in the winter, and the grass here is green, and people have flowers blooming in the windowboxes. Weird.

So then I headed over to my new neighborhood, Camden Town, to check it out. Along with the wonderfully cheap (and slightly ghetto) supermarket, Woolworths, and Internet cafe (and my personal favorite, the Tennessee Fried Chicken place), I discovered shoppers' paradise - the Camden markets. Forget about H&M, I'm only shopping here from now on. There are about 5 markets total in Camden, I think, making for an endless amount of stalls and small shops carrying everything from vintage clothes to books to furniture to handicrafts. It's amazing - the stalls just go on and on. I found a little store with the most beautiful clothes I've ever seen (unfortunately, they were all incredibly expensive, but that didn't stop me from looking) and a shop that was giving a huge African drum lesson/demonstration. Probably the coolest market is the Stables Market, which houses its small little stalls in an old brick (you guessed it) stable. I felt like I could be in there for hours - and I probably will be, in the future. Hooray for shopping. This bodes badly for my wallet. Oh, and the selection of food is also amazing - there are stalls selling every kind of dfood imaginable. The best part is at the end of the day, when they start selling off huge portions for less money, in an attempt to get rid of the food. Hence the £3 - the only money I actually spent today - on a big, delicious plate of chicken lo mein. yummy.

And then I headed off for my final destination of the day, a chamber music concert, held in a theater only a few minutes from my college. It's part of a series held every Sunday evening - and the best part is, it's free for students. So that's mainly the reason I went, but it was quite nice all the same. I like all this free stuff - it definitely suits my budget.

I have two job interviews tomorrow, both with colleges, serving as an administrator. Here's to hoping my dress shirt has somehow magically unwrinkled itself while I was out gallivanting around town. :p

= :)