Making the most of mixed weather

Late afternoon in The Regent's Park

Gail's and Colin's flat is located in St. John's Wood, a quiet, upscale residential neighbourhood of north London. It sits on the corner where their street meets Abbey Road. Yes, that is the same Abbey Road of Beatles fame, and in fact the famous crosswalk on the album cover (and the recording studio in front of which it's found) is not more than 100m from the door of their building. More than anything else, it's an annoyance local residents as tourists from all over insist on making fools of themselves taking pictures in the middle of the crosswalk, disrupting traffic while doing so.

This morning we set off to Canary Wharf for dim sum. The area, indeed once a real wharf, is now a thriving business and shopping district crammed with the tall glass towers of big banks, law firms, and corporations that rivals the city's traditional financial centre. Bombed to smithereens during the war, the docks area lay derelict until a massive revitalization project began in the early 1980s. However, a delay in the extension of the Jubilee (tube) line and the property market collapse of the early '90s threw the project off track and bankrupted the company financing the project. Things got back on track in the mid-90s with a new international consortium known as the Canary Wharf Group. Since the group was chaired by Canadian Paul Reichmann and the underground network of tunnels and shopping connecting the towers was based on Toronto's PATH system, the Canary Wharf area now has many places with names such as "Canada Square" and "Canada Place".

Gail tells me that there are surprisingly few Chinese in London (compared to Toronto, that is), and as a result, finding good Chinese cuisine can be difficult. The restaurant we went to was one that they had discovered and found to be up to par, and indeed the dim-sum was good. Afterwards, I got a tour of their plush offices nearby.

We then did more shopping before finishing up with a walk through The Regent's Park. One of London's largest parks, it was fairly busy depite the less than ideal weather conditions. Beautiful trees and flowers were in bloom and the array of waterfowl, including cranes and herons, was quite impressive. Lucky for us, it was all within a short walk of Gail's flat, where we finished off the evening with a nice home-cooked meal.