London's East End...

I am happy to report that I got my passport renewed!! And I got a stamp from the hostel!! Yay!!!

Now... if only I could have a backpack like Andrea's... with all those cool badges from places they've been...

Today is a gorgeous sunny day and we are off to the east end of London... never been there before...

We got the top front seats of a double decker bus - best views!

The east end is full of lots of new buildings... all metal and steel...

With a few older ones... oooh... Starbucks!

That's the Gherkin in the distance!!

We got off here... er...

... here!! At Spitalfields Market...

They had an old bus here...

With a sign that says "Please do not sit on the bonnet"... I don't see any bonnets... but we did sit on the hood of the bus!

A white goat... on a pile of boxes... what is the meaning of this?? I looked it up and "it's supposed to represent the waves of immigrants that have marked this particular area of London, and to reflect how they have "faced their own form of conflict, oppression and poverty." Eeennnterrressttteennngg....

There was also a pear and fig sculpture... uhhh... we still have work to do on our Cultural Recognition & Appreciation certificate! Although Otto liked that the folds of the "cloth" had pools of water in it!

We were here a tad early (not all the stalls were set up yet)...

So we stopped for a bit of a drink. We tried a sparkling Orange & Mango drink... not as good as the Elderflower drink we had the other day.

And then we toddled around the market... ooohhh... Little Fox likes that picture!!!

A very erudite fox who obviously does have his Cultural Appreciation certificate!

 We also stumbled upon this candy shop... or as they say in England... sweets shop... they had Harry Potter stuff...

Let's go in!

Oooh... it's like an old-fashioned sweets shop... except for the very modern till of course...

Rose almost bought a bottle of ersatz Butter Beer... but it wasn't "real" Butter Beer (rather, Butterscotch Beer) so she passed on it.

 We also found another street market that went on f-o-r-e-v-e-r!

We finally dragged the humans out...

Cool building...

And then took a rather crowded bus back to... The British Library!! They have gift shops with Harry Potter stuff... so we heard...

We're going to wait out here...

While the rest of our tour joins the very, very long queue...

And... that's it! Beanie and crew were headed home today... we had a GREAT time with them...