Last night a bunch of us went to a bar in Camden to watch and listen to an hour of bluegrass - a sub-genre of country music (yeehaw!).

Hmmm, no tipping in these hard times ;)

Bluegrass turned into a bit of bar hopping and eventually back to our flat for an impromptu night of pissing the neighbours off. This morning I went out to find my classic hangover cure - Subway and Powerade (or any sort of sports drink). Trust me it works ;) Anyway here's a good example of my neighbourhood (and London in general): really nice and expensive apartments on one street, all quite easy on the eyes, and barely five minutes around the corner these God-awful bloody concrete monstrosities. Our flat is sort of in between: you walk out my door and head two minutes in one direction and you're at the shot on the left, two minutes in the other direction and you're in Concreteville.

Another sign of the times. Steve here will work to the highest standard in your garden...

And Marta, a caring and trustworthy chick, will look after your mutt.

While stuffing my face with Subway and feeling a lot better for it, I kept walking. Eventually I found Abbey Road.

Anyone who knows the Beatles should know this - the cover of their 1969 album 'Abbey Road'. You'll never guess where this photo was taken ;) The cover photograph has since become one of the most famous and most imitated album covers in recording history. The Peppers walked naked across it in 1988, and the Simpsons 'walked' across it at some point as well. The Volkswagen Beatle on the left belonged to someone living in an apartment across the street. After the album came out, the number plate was stolen repeatedly off the car hahaha! The car is now on display in the Volkswagen museum in Germany. In both the Beatles shot and the Simpsons shot, there is a guy standing across the road from the Volkswagen (hard to spot here - look behind John Lennon's head). That guy was an American tourist unaware he had been photographed until he saw the album cover months later.

Apparently some 150,000 people come here a year just to do what these folks are doing.

Each with their own style hehe.

There is a live webcam of the crossing streaming here, so you can watch the idiot tourists for yourself :)

Beside the crossing is the EMI Abbey Road music studios, with fan graffiti all over the fence. The Beatles recorded 90% of their music here, along with the likes of Pink Floyd, Radiohead, etc, and movie soundtracks including Lord of the Rings, Stars Wars, and Harry Pothead.

The weather was its usual unpredictable self again today, but I kept walking.

The Capital Ring is a 120km walking route encircling central London with an average radius of about 7km (I think). I started walking a section of this a few weeks back (when it was too windy for cycling), but got distracted by a far more interesting-looking path leading off it. Anyway, my hung-over walking today somehow took me back to the same area (it's very easy to get completely disoriented in this city!).

Polluted city.

This is all roughly in the area of Hampstead in North London, home to some of the most expensive housing in the London area. Hampstead has more millionaires within its boundaries than any other area of the UK.

Hampstead Heath is a large hilly parkland, covering some 790 acres.

When I got here I wished I'd brought the bike after all as there are a few tracks around here complete with jumps and so on. Anyway, that was my hung over cure.

A while back my flatmate Davydd and his mate Stu decided to throw a big-ass boat party on the River Thames called Exit Hibernation (with it being spring and all). On the left was our living room yesterday after Dav got done preparing decorations for the boat on the right, and what sturdy-looking old girl she is!

All booze was confiscated at the door (so everyone had to pay extortionate prices on the boat) which cost us about a dozen beers between us, but I had Davydd smuggle some on for me hehe ;)

The boat had two 'stages' - upstairs and down. Not a lot of head-room downstairs, and I smacked my nut at least twice on that white beam.

There was a bit of a shin-dig going on along the shore as well, and they all looked considerably hammered.

Dav took up the DJ'ing duties downstairs for the first hour, to a massive crowd of approximately...

...nobody, hahaha! But the two bar staff appeared to be enjoying it ;)

Eventually we left off from the pier for six hours of cruising the Thames.

We started heading west, past the London Eye...

Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament...

Riverside apartments for people who earn too much...

And the Waste Authority, who I'm pretty sure just dump their waste in the river.

About this point people had started to trickle downstairs to enjoy Dav's smooth sounds, until those smooth sounds completely stopped all of a sudden hehe. After five minutes of checking wires and pushing buttons, turning the amp off and on again seemed to sort it out (until later when the downstairs lost all power altogether for the rest of the night).

After an hour of west, we turned and went... east, yup.

Tower Bridge and the HMS Belfast.

Fun times ;)

The boat for the next party.

The Millennium Dome in Greenwich. Michael Jackson is due to play several dozen concerts here starting in July.

We passed the eastern edge of London and continued into the sunset, and from there the rest of the night is pretty much a blur (good thing too because the music was crap ;)

We got back to town at 1am, head sore from those low beams downstairs, and stumbled home.

I woke up the next 'morning' at 2pm. Sunny, mid-twenties - beautiful! This was Hyde Park at about 7pm. I was meant to go to Twickenham with a bunch of mates to watch the rugby Sevens (part of the IRB Sevens World Series), but a) I really couldn't be arsed 2) it was a bit late in the day by the time I fell out of bed, and d) Dav had managed to leave the power cable for his laptop on the boat after using it while DJ'ing so I offered to bike out and grab it.

While I was out the odometer hit 6,000kms. Not bad over 25 months (and only two pedestrians taken out - here and here ;)