Oyster Cards and Karaoke

today we awoke and had our first hotel breakfast. it was not bad, but definitely not good. We then ventured into the city in search of a UK power cord, a bank, and some food. At the station we got our oyster cards, these transit speed passes... which we have decided are the worlds greatest invention. you prepay for unlimited travel...and then you just touch it to a scanner... it beeps... and off you go. It's our first sense of not being tourists... while others are fumbling around, trying to figure out the gates and pay machines, we just wave our pass like the other local londoners (beep). Oyster cards make us smile. Anyway... so today we ended up on Tottenham Court Road home to the largest stationery&gift store in all of london. This was Cassie's heaven (aka paperchase) and John's worst nightmare. We found a bank and suitable power cord and then, beep, hopped on the tube towards home. We stopped in the Canary Wharf area which looks a lot more like a cleaned up Chicago than any part of London. All of the buildings are closely connected skyscrapers and condo buildings with some sort of mall beneath. It seems to be a great area for working in and we had lil boxed sandwiches from a fancy grocery on a park bench here. A stock ticker wraps around the buildings and a signs boast new york... paris... milan... hong kong... canary wharf...

From here we had to jet home to take a brief nap because we wanted to catch karaoke and bitters at 'the victoria' our local pub...most of the singers were better than ameican idol, so we refrained from embarassing ourselves. A late night plate of chips and brown sauce wrapped up the day perfectly. Did we mention the Oyster Cards? beep.