The Palace and the Missing Virgin

We're in London, continues...

Yesterday John and Ramsay took the train to spend the day in Brighton. Above is a panorama of The Royal Pavillion. The weather was perfect, a gorgeous day. John enjoyed Brighton and I will probably venture down there with him at some point.

Meanwhile, I went shopping. Shopping?! Yea, rare activity for me. But sometimes, you know, I need stuff.

I decided to do some book shopping at Waterstones. Book shopping?! Yes, I do still buy books. I don't just mooch them or buy ebooks. I love buying books, in fact. It's what to do with them afterward that is the problem. That's where BookMooch comes in.

It was such a gorgeous day and London is so empty in February, I love it. Well, not exactly empty but compared to the summertime it is and I love being able to actually walk down the street. I walked through Leicester Square and on through Piccadilly Circus and... wait, what's that? The useless Virgin Megastore is gone and has been replaced by a store called Zavvi.

I have ranted about how awful the Virgin Megastore was many times so I was happy to see it gone. Wait, oh I see, only the name has changed. It was a management buy-out. Er, whatever. I did not go into the store (I'd rather go to the dentist) but from the window displays and their website it looks like cd's have finally taken a back seat to dvd's and games. Well, for me, buying music online is much better anyway. For the last few years I've had a really hard time finding the music I like in stores and I buy tons of it online. So now there truly is no reason for me to go into a store like Zavvi and it's probably only a matter of time before most people feel the same way.

Onward to Waterstones which continues to be one of the best bookstores ever. I found the books I was looking for, yay. It is very difficult not to find something at Waterstones, it really is a fabulous store.

Then I walked up Regent Street to the Apple Store to buy one of those new super-flat keyboards. John likes it (well, for me to use it) because it's so quiet. I like it because it looks like something from the future. It was a lovely walk.

Speaking of lovely walks, pictured below is our street. Although they are nearly finished the water main replacement, they have now started the sidewalk renovation project. They are doubling the width of the sidewalk by eliminating street parking on one side of the street, plus they are renovating the curb on the other side. So after having everything blocked off and dug up since September they are doing it again.

One of the workers noticed me taking photos and I asked him if this was the sidewalk expansion project and he said yes and that it would go rather quickly. Surprisingly, I did not ask for his definition of quickly, nor did I suggest that they could have done the sidewalk renovation at the same time as the water main replacement so they would only have had to block everything off and dig it up once.

With any luck they won't get to our house until we go back to California. '-)

Comments

[Jeremy]

Nice pix!. Did you get the wired or wireless keyboard? I kinda like the look of the Bluetooth 1 better but I see it lacks the Ten-key.. Both are nice though but the wireless is all beveled and rounded at the top underside, and the wired is all USB shaped.. Hmm.

[Jan Hanford]

I got the wired one because I like the numeric pad.