Out and About, Day 2

Photos today, left to right: Walking up City Road toward Islington High Street; eating lunch at Wagamama; Trying to find IKEA. (Click on any photo to make it bigger.)

Today was an adventure. We woke up about 12:30 p.m. - isn't that terrible? I guess we were pretty tired! We ended up leaving here around 3 with a goal of going out to Wembley to the IKEA store. We decided to do this because our driver from the airport gave us a travelcard for all zones and it expired today.
Let me explain this.
Usually, your London Travelcard - which gets you on the bus and tube - is good for Zones 1 and 2, which takes in a lot of territory. Pretty much everything you want to do in London is in Zones 1 and 2 ... but we had a free all-zones cards and decided to be adventurous. We love IKEA and we figured that we might find something cheap and colorful for our very white apartment.
After leaving here, we walked up to the Islington High Street. (That's what they call the main shopping streets in each area.) We decided to eat some lunch so we stopped at Wagamama. This is a very popular London restaurant - a big room with long tables and mostly noodle dishes. I got Chicken Katsu Curry, which was strips of chicken coated with panko crumbs and fried, covered in sticky rice and curry sauce. I loved it. Keith got Chicken Chili Men, which was stir-fried chicken in a sauce of chiles, ginger, garlic, onions, tomatoes and lemongrass. It was served with noodles and vegetables. It looked like spaghetti to me. He said it was quite spicy.
After lunch, we got on the tube for our trip to IKEA. It was an easy ride but when we got there, we had quite a ways to walk. But no worries - you can't miss that big blue building. We found a fun orange table runner and some colorful napkins and a set of plastic bowls - there were no bowls in this kitchen. I also picked up a red colander because we didn't have one. Now, here's an interesting fact - as I mentioned yesterday, I needed a tea pitcher. IKEA has everything, right? Right - except for tea pitchers. I just wanted a cheap plastic pitcher. I couldn't find anything, so my quest for tea goes unfulfilled. But tomorrow I WILL FIND a pitcher.
After we left IKEA, we hopped on a shuttle to get us to the Stonebridge Park tube station (we did not know about this on the way in!). It was a lively little shuttle with a group of very loud Asian women. We drove about a mile or so, then stopped. There was an accident ahead. We sat and sat and sat. Finally several people got off the shuttle and started walking. We asked the driver how far it was to the station - his answer: "About a 10-minute walk." We got off and started walking.
We walked about five minutes and stopped - there was a police line on the sidewalk where the accident was and we couldn't go forward. We sat on a low wall and waited. Finally, the ambulance was loaded and we were able to walk. It took us at least 20 minutes to get to the station.
Moral of story - When someone tells you it's a 10-minute walk, they're lying.
Our last stop was the grocery store.

Observations today:
** When you have to carry your groceries for a mile, you will definitely cut down on impulse buying. And you will choose the half-pint of milk over the half-gallon. Small sizes of everything look good.
** Treasure your Big Gulp. My Coke with lunch was smaller than anything you'll find in the states (I did get about four ice cubes - hurray!) and it cost 1 pound, 85 pence ... which is about $3.75. Free refills? Rubbish, mate. It ain't happening here.
** There's no such thing as a free trolley. We call them grocery carts back home, and they're free. Here, you "rent" them for a pound. When you return your trolley, you get your pound back. If you leave it in the middle of road, you're out the money. We put ours back. We have good manners and we're cheap too.