LBF & Camden Lock

The second day of LBF was just as fun as the first, starting with an excellent talk on BookTube, which gave me some really good pointers for my own youtube channel (beware of cussing if you decide to watch my videos). Again, I'm not gonna go into too much detail, as you can again find the complete twitter recount over on my tumblr (again, read from the bottom up). 

Hachette had a balcony! Also, another bonus of this trip: I learned to pronounce Hachette properly, and not like a painfully oblivious anglophile.

This was the first year that the gaming industry had been invited into the book fair, so I ended up going to quite a few talks on that, as they were really interesting, including a Q&A with Rihanna Pratchett,  who writes for video games and also happens to be Terry Pratchett's daughter.

I got quite a few totes at the London book fair - you can see a couple more of them in my video recap of the LBF - but this one was definitely my favourite, from Laurence King Publishing.

There was a meet-and-greet at the Publishing Scotland stand at the end of the day at which I spectacularly failed to network at, and which Laura, Alix, Rachel, Kate, and I eventually ditched in order to find some food - we decided to head over to Camden Lock for some cheap street food.

I really like the neighbourhood of Camden - apparently its really tourist-y, but it also seemed to be where all the weird people hung out, so I liked being there.

Plus all the buildings are decorated.

Kate and I decided to go for vegetarian curry - all that? Cost me £3. YUM.

Super beat up motorcycle seats...

After that we decided to get crepes for dessert because it was crepe happy hour, so they were a quid off (yeah, no, we would have got them anyways).

YUM. 

This trip has resulted in a lot more people being aware of just how much I am not kidding when I talk about how crazy my hair is - as seen in this lovely before-and-after shot. 

London, Baby

Our first full day in London I got up, went to put on my pants, and discovered that my zipper had somehow completely broken. Luckily, the plan for the day already involved a lot of shopping, and I was able to grab some dresses to replace the pants (I already own more jeans that I need, so I decided to buy a couple of dresses instead). 

We first went to Camden Lock, which I had completely missed my last visit to London, and which was huge, confusing, and kind of amazing. 

The Camden markets are a number of adjoining large retail markets in Camden Town near the Hampstead Road Lock of the Regent's Canal (popularly referred to as Camden Lock), often collectively named "Camden Market" or "Camden Lock". Among products sold on the stalls are crafts, clothing, bric-a-brac, and fast food. It is the fourth-most popular visitor attraction in London, attracting approximately 100,000 people each weekend.

It was also gorgeously sunny out, a refreshing change from the previous miserable weeks in Scotland, and we all attempted to soak up as much sunlight as possible (especially important as it proceeded to rain the next two days, finally getting nice out again when we stopped spending our days outside, and the LBF started. Typical).

There were a LOT of people in Camden, and though I didn't buy anything, there was a huge variety of things for sale in the market(s).

I was super excited by all the flowering trees we were seeing around London. I just love flowering trees.

After we left Camden we headed up to Oxford street to do some shopping (I still had only broken jeans at this point).

Melissa doing her best hippie impression.

After that, we headed over to the only Five Guys in Britain. There was a line up outside as it is very popular, but it moved fast and we were seated in no time.

Out of all the things I miss about Canada, food has got to be one of the main ones.

That night we played Cards Against Humanity back at the hostel, and then Melissa, Leanne, and myself went to see Divergent, which was meh. Definitely nowhere near as good as the book.