Camden Markets

Where: London, England

When: May 27, 2012

With: Andrea and Mike

After Andrea, Mike, and I wandered through Regent's Park, we decided to hit up the Camden Markets. And luckily we found the beautiful canal that leads straight from the park to the market. There's one long, but narrow, path along the water, resulting in a lot of people/bike dodging. But the walk is gorgeous. It's like you've left London and gone to some small village in the Netherlands.

The canal has houseboats moored all along its edges.

After a 45 minute stroll, we reached the market. Camden Market is actually made up of a bunch of smaller markets. The first one we went to was Camden Lock Village. It was a crowded tangle of food kiosks crammed into narrow, windy alleyways that sat along the water. There was pretty much every food imaginable here, and things were complete mayhem all around, with food sizzling and orders being shouted over the noise. Equally as unique was the line of motorcycles set up for you to sit and enjoy whatever your purchase was while you looked out upon the canal.

As we were walking down the canal, we hit the first "lock" I've ever seen. When there is a gradient in the land along a river, a lock is put in place to help boats climb or descend the slope (otherwise, you'd be white water rafting in your houseboat). It's basically like a man made dam - you enter this little enclosure on your boat when the water level is low, close a gate behind you, and the water from upstream fills it up. When you open the front gates, you're at the same level as the upper part of the river. 

The three of us were absolutely fascinated by this process. The first time we got to see it in action was when an old hippie man attempted to open the locks and move his houseboat out of the enclosure. He couldn't get the gates open on his own. Some very helpful passerbys helped him open one gate, at which point he said that he'd be fine pushing his boat through and nudging the second gate open himself. Unfortunately, as he went through the one open gate, his boat smushed up against the edge of the canal, catching a buoy tied to the side of the boat. The rope holding the buoy went taut, and as he continued to push through, the rope caught the satellite dish on the roof of his boat and ripped it off. Oops. Note to self: always open both gates.

After we pulled ourselves away from the canal (we watched two more boats go through the lock), we ventured on to see more of the markets. The next section of we went through was all the clothing. Small stalls were set up in a giant maze, filled with everything from vintage t-shirts to vintage dresses. Unfortunately, due to bird poop incident, we decided to end our market adventure. 

We enjoyed the rest of the very sunny afternoon at a pub with some refreshing Pimm's and Lemonade. 

I had a blast, Andrea!! (I know you are reading this :-) )