Lovely weekend in lovely London

Last weekend was a long one :) I had Friday, Saturday and Sunday off. Banzai! So on Friday afternoon we went to visit my sister and her family in east London (Walthamstow). Edie-chan (our British niece) is now one year old and very very busy and very fluent in her own special language. We met her and my sister and their friends in a baby-friendly cafe first (see above photo of Shun in the role of Mary Poppins - Edie-chan is on the right in cool jeans).

After the cafe we said goodbye to the friends and went back to my sister's house. Here we became Slaves of Edie-chan and could not relax at all in her kingdom. Finally she did baby things like Having a Bath and Going to Bed and Shun and I could sit down and say, "Ah!" After that we had a really nice evening with my sister and her husband (George), drinking wine and eating the delicious lamb and roast vegetables which they cooked for us. My sister also made a great dessert from mascarpone cheese and limes. Sadly, the next morning we became Slaves of Edie-chan again and were saved from Death by Playing only when George produced his amazing giant and juicy omelette. At that point, we rebelled and said "No, Edie Your Majesty, we are not playing with you anymore. We are going to eat breakfast." It was a terrifying moment. At first, we thought Queen Edie might try to execute us with her plastic singing teapot. Luckily, she found the cats instead and marched away to torture them.
We left the Kingdom of Edie at lunchtime and decided to explore Walthamstow a little. It's a funny place. At first, it can seem a bit rough and not very pretty. But we had a lovely walk in the local park, found the William Morris Gallery (small and great) and finally walked through the market (the longest street market in Europe! And full of plugs!) We were very satisfied with all of this, but Walthamstow had one more treat for us: just outside the bus station we were given an enthusiastic performance by some energetic Native American street musicians (and you don't find them everywhere, let me tell you). They even had their own tee-pee. Impressive.
After such delights, we got the tube into central London and did a little shopping. It was a sunny afternoon which became a beautiful dusk. Our friends, Ken (Japanese) and Tanya (British), are moving to Japan and in the evening we went to their leaving party. There were nice, interesting people there and delicious snacks and beer. We chatted and snacked and drank and relaxed. We felt good. It was a lovely weekend in a lovely city.