on my last day in london i went down to greenwich to see the prime meridian. i also went to the maritime museum. the great thing about london is that all the big museums are free! on the way, i stopped at canary wharf, which is a huge development where all the big banks are based. it is probably the closest thing europe has to an american downtown. it was foggy and all the skyscrapers were cloaked in fog – beautiful. then that evening i went to camden town. this is the place one would gravitate toward if one had a tattoo of a welsh dragon tattooed across one’s face, a fluorescent red show-hawk to show off, a studded dog collar around your neck that is a few sizes too small, a disturbing sexual fetish, or perhaps an urgent need for some hard drugs. you get the picture. of course, you can go there if you follow a more normal lifestyle as well, and just do some shopping for a ramones t-shirt or something. truly an eclectic place.
the next day i took the train to gatwick, and left london 🙁
i flew on airbaltic, a latvian low cost airline, to riga, latvia. i navigated the riga airport with a british couple who were on a quest to watch an ice hockey game in every country where it is played. for some reason the diminutive airport seemed a lot more complicated than it should have been – we needed to take three different buses between terminals before finding the right place. despite the fact that the whole airport only had about ten gates. i bought a stale sandwich containing lots of butter and a few thin slices of pickle which the wrapper claimed to be the best latvia has to offer – i sure hope its wrong. i’m sure it is. then i flew to dubai!