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. 

LBF

First day of London Book Fair! 

Earls Court was amazing - it was huge, there were so many stalls, and even though, as a student, you kinda felt like you didn't really fit into the flow of the event, it was still so cool to see all these publishers in one place, and to attend all these really cool seminars.

I'm not going to talk to much about the seminars themselves, they were really interesting and informative, and if you want to know more about them, I did live-tweet the majority of them, so you can find day one compiled for your reading convenience over on my tumblr. Because of the way twitter organizes its content, if you want to read them in chronological order, you'll need to scroll down to the bottom and read up.

Some of the seminars were just okay, but the majority of them were really fun and informative.

Afterwards, Leanne, Becky, Melissa, Alix, and myself headed to TGI Friday's, where we were unable to resist the siren call of cocktails the size of our heads (or at least of Becky's head).

mmmmmm, pina colada.

Everyone got ribs, but joke was on them, because my quesadilla was delicious.

After dinner, we headed back to the hotel, where we hung out in Leanne and Becky's room playing Cards Against Humanity/jelly bean roulette (we'd bought a bag of Bertie Bott's every flavour beans from Harry Potter, so losers had to pick one out without looking and eat it, though they could spit it out after. I can now attest that vomit and bogies are absolutely disgusting, and vomit gives you a very real acid-reflux taste at the back of your throat, while pepper is VERY pepper-y - however, unlike everyone else, I didn't spit any one out. 

#hardcore

(honestly I was just so happy I didn't get sausage, earthworm, rotten egg, earwax, or soap).

Sushi & Art

Our last free day in London involved even more shopping somehow, including a new favourite of mine: a juice cube (mine is blue). Its a cute little external battery that you charge up, and then just throw into your purse, and you can then charge your phone from it, without having to find a plug in (something that was very handy for LBF, since my live-tweeting of various talks tended to kill my phone battery rather quickly). 

Then we went to Yo Sushi for lunch, which is still a super fun way to eat sushi. 

Then I ditched these guys, who were headed to the Natural History Museum, to meet Kate at the Tate Modern. I enjoyed the Natural History Museum the last time I was in London, but in terms of dinosaurs, after going to the Royal Tyrell, its just not that exciting, and I already did my huge amount of geeking out over their collection on Charles Darwin last time. But I really wanted to go back to the Tate Modern. I even did a spread on it for Hashtag. 

Its such a cool building.

After that, we headed back to the hostel to grab our stuff and move it over the hotel, which was literally next door (I have awesome planning skills). Then about 25 of us went out for dinner at Pizza Express, before collapsing in utter exhaustion. I was sharing a triple with Alix and Melissa.

However, sleep was not to be, due to a large number of screaming, singing, shouting, and banging Spanish teenagers running loose all over the hotel. Apparently people who were downstairs in the bar saw a large number of other guests complaining to the reception and asking where the teachers were (it was obviously a school group). The students must have gotten in trouble, because they were quieter the second night, but still made their presence known. That, and the fact that the mattress was attempting to impale me with springs meant that I never slept well while staying there.

Oh to be rich

After a very late start (everyone was moving so slowly I actually went and got the sides of my head trimmed while I was waiting) we headed over to Kensington for our second day in London. Kensington is a very very pretty, very very posh area of London, and very near to where Alix's brother lives, and where she was staying. 

Yup.

I think I could stand to live here.

We were headed for a pancake shop. I stuck with the classics (maple syrup and butter forever) but some other people were a bit more adventures...

... while Alix got a crepe the size of her head.

After that we headed over the Harrods, which was really cool, but also made me really nervous, as I was kind of afraid that I would accidentally hit something and break it, and have to pay for it.

All these glamorous ladies got macaroons...

... while Jack was just really stoked to meet Goofy. We went into the Disney Cafe because the others really wanted to, but I just got a glass of tap water, because a coke was friggin £4 there.

Also: Gandalf's staff.

Some nice, affordable whisky anyone? (tag reads £135,000 - apparently this brand's popularity shot up after James Bond drank it in the newest films and the only ones left are the incredibly expensive ones).

After Harrods we went to a cheap ticket booth for those on the hunt for musical tickets, but it was closed... however, we were also walking past M&M world and thus obviously had to go inside. Didn't buy anything, but it it was quite the experience.

And by 'experience' I mean exercise in gross consumerism. 

So much candy though...

After that... this might have been the night we went out for Chinese? I was pretty exhausted at this point so I was kind of a zombie for the rest of the night.