OK, so we slept in today after last night's inadvertent "hotel room drunkening". This was almost kind of cool in a way, as I had planned a bit of a "slow day" after yesterday's V&A "museum marathon". Lisa and I both woke up starving, so we quickly got ready and headed down to yet another of my favorite restaurants in the world:

Ahhhh yes... The Stockpot. If I ever meet Rick Steves in person, I simply must thank him for giving me this recommendation! It's like going home to eat at mom's house (well, assuming your mom is British, that is). The Stockpot serves nothin' but old fashioned comfort food - and it's totally affordable too! They offer a daily prix fixe menu, which I always get. For the unbelievable price of £6.90 (well, unbelievable for London), you get three full courses. Check it out:

Above left: the appetizer, Spaghetti Bolognese

Above: the mains. I had Cumberland sausages in a stroganoff sauce with mashed potatoes, peas and carrots. Lisa had the stuffed aubergine (eggplant) with chips, peas and carrots.

Left: the best dessert ever: apple crumble with custard!

Of course, even a great place like The Stockpot is still British. If you click the picture to the left and look carefully, you'll see a single lonely lil' ice cube floating in the Diet Coke. That cracks me up every time... I mean, why even bother with a single ice cube? Is it because it was so cold out? Do they do the same thing in the summer? I mean, London is like New York in that many places don't have air conditioning simply because it rarely gets hot enough to use it. Walking down a street in London is (in a way) like going back in time in the United States - restaurants and bars proudly advertise "AIR CONDITIONED!" on their signs and windows, as if it's some newfangled thing they have going on or something. One almost expects to see "RUNNING WATER!" or "INDOOR TOILETS!" on the signs as well. Oh, and speaking of, something you might not know: most English sinks have two taps: one for hot water and another for cold water. The reason for this is historical and the exact reason is debatable, but apparently what you're supposed to do is stopper the sink and fill it halfway up with hot and cold water, thus making a nice pool of warm water to wash in. The problem is, many public sinks simply don't have stoppers, so washing your hands entails quickly moving your hands from the hot tap to the cold tap in an effort to keep your skin from burning and\or freezing. God bless the British and their crazy sinks!

But there's more... While Lisa was changing some of her money into pounds, I stood outside the bureau de change and decided to look at a street vendors wares. I saw a Chelsea shirt that kind of interested me, but I wanted it in an XXL size, because those cheap touristy shirts shrink like three sizes when you wash them... Anyway, the vendor saw my interest and swooped on me like a hawk! Before I knew what was going on, he had an XXL shirt in his hand and was wanting £15.99 for it. That dude was slick: half used car salesman, half Ricky Roma. $30 was a little more than I wanted to spend for a t-shirt, so I quickly spotted a Chelsea toboggan that was only £6.99.... which he quickly upgraded to an "officially licensed" Chelsea toboggan for only £9.99. Since it was freezing and my little ears knew it, I went ahead and bought it. Damn salesmen... remind me never to go to one of those time share presentations, OK?

Anyway, by now Lisa had finished changing her money, so we went across the street to the Virgin Megastore. This was our first foray into a shop and I almost immediately regretted it. The "after Christmas sales" were in full effect, and the Megastore was so crowded it was extremely difficult to move around. I mean, at one point I remember wondering if they were having a sale on eternal life or something, it was that crowded. Anyway, I was there 'cos I wanted the new Bananarama DVD single... only I had no idea where it would be. It's a DVD, but it comes in a regular jewel case. I first went to the "singles" section, then somehow made it to the "Music DVD" section before managing to fight my way back to the singles section. It was there that Lisa had the smarts to, you know, ask an employee about it. And so, I then learned a valuable lesson: if you're looking for something at Virgin Megastore and don't see it, ask an employee.

For some reason, Virgin only puts a fraction of their stock on the floor. In fact, I looked over the employee's shoulder as he searched for "Bananarama" on the store's computer and saw that they had around 90 total Bananarama CD singles in stock, yet had not a single one of them on the sales floor! WTF?!? The computer said that they had 23 of the single I wanted in stock, so he opened a huge cabinet that was stuffed to the gills with CD singles. It was so weird... why have all those discs hidden in a cabinet behind a service desk? They had an entire wall full of "Virgin Top 40" CD singles, as well as a rack full of "Virgin Recommended" singles, not to mention entire sections of hip-hop and techno\trance\electronica CD singles... but not a single pop music single was to be found. Weird.

It's me in my new "officially licensed" Chelsea hat! My lil' ears were so cold before I had the hat!

From Virgin, we crossed the street to Boots, where Lisa wanted to pick up some personal items like a brush and some Kleenex. Boots was even more crowded than Virgin, and as I was walking around I thought of what a loss-prevention nightmare this store must be: like most other drug stores, Boots has lots of high value items sitting out on shelves. This particular store has an upstairs and a downstairs, so hiding from the store cameras and security must be easier than at other Boots stores. Whilst we were there, the store was more crowded than Grand Central at rush hour, and is located at a busy five point intersection that's jammed full of cars and people. It'd be nothing to grab a huge handful of pricey Clinique stuff and simply bolt... there's a huge crowd of people to lose yourself in and at least six different escape routes. I'm glad keeping up with shoplifters at that store is someone else's job!

We next walked up Regent Street to Beak Street, where I wanted to stop and snap a couple of photos: 

And here's one specifically for fans of the old "Virgin Breakfast with Pete and Geoff" show.
This is a pic of Regent News at 45 Beak Street, just around the corner from Virgin Radio's studios. A guy named Minu works there and he used to provide the hilarious commentary for the "What's In Today's Headlines" bit on the Pete and Geoff show.

A poster of that month's "Easy Living" magazine outside of Regent News.
Contrary to all known other examples of females in this world, Kristin Scott Thomas is actually getting prettier as she gets older.

I stopped in at the Ben Sherman store (pictured left), lured in by the "50% off" signs in the window. Of course, 50% off at Ben Sherman is still a fairly pricey proposition, but I was nevertheless able to find a cute lil' shirt for around £17. Next door to Ben Sherman is "Kingly Court"  - a cute little arcade that features all sorts of cute little shops selling all kinds of cute little things. Lisa was particularly taken with "Twinkled", a vintage shop located on the second floor of the arcade. They indeed had lots of fun and interesting stuff, but like most high-end vintage stores, their prices were unbelievably high. I myself was especially smitten with a Philips "Space Helmet TV" from the 1970s (pic here), but sadly I had neither £200, nor a need for a PAL TV with godawful reception. You can bet that thing isn't cable ready!

From Kingly Court we moved on to Gear, our favorite London "gak shack". I must be losing my giddiness with London, 'cos I only spent £21.70 at Gear this go 'round, as opposed to the £100 I spent there on the last trip. And aside from a London t-shirt and a Chelsea scarf, the stuff I bought was mostly practical: a tin of London tea that'll make a swell pencil holder one day, a keychain (to replace the one that broke only a few weeks ago), a Jam postcard that I'll one day frame, as well as a miniature Trafalgar Square street sign that I'll put on the wall next to my "Tower Bridge" and "Carnaby Street" signs... assuming that I ever put those up, too.

I'll tell you one thing though - Gear must make some serious money there on Carnaby Street. We've been in the shop around three times now, and it's been jam-packed each time. And as I approached the cash register on this particular visit, the cashier decided to make cash drop before checking me out. I almost gasped out loud as she pulled a stack of £20 notes as thick as the Manhattan phone book out of the drawer, put them in a paper bag and labeled it, then handed it off to an employee who went to the back room (and, presumably, the store's safe) with the loot.

Having said that, Lisa also didn't spend near as much at Gear as she did on the last trip... Or did she? One of the things she really wanted to buy on this trip were scarves. She hadn't found any she really like up to this point, but as we walked towards Oxford Circus, she spotted a street vendor:

She was hooked. Before I knew it, she'd picked out seven scarves in a variety of colors and styles. From the looks of things, the vendor was shutting down for the day, and my hunny's purchase was the last big sale of the day - you know, the one that gives you the beer money?

Anyway, after Lisa pillaged the street vendor, we decided to take a few minutes and just people watch at Oxford Circus:

It's really hard to describe the vast horde of people from all over the planet you'll see at this intersection. If you just sit quietly and listen, you'll hear dozens of different languages and accents and see people of all shapes and sizes... most of whom are talking on cell phones!

After hanging out for a little while, we headed back to Edgware Road. We stopped in at the Marks & Spencer food hall yet again, this time for more sandwiches, crisps and cheese. We went back to the room and ate up our yummy treats, then decided to walk around the neighborhood again. In doing so, I stopped for more beer again. But this time I was a good boy - I kept it under control.

End of Day 3. Click here to go to Day 4!