Little Venice

Sunday 7 January

A leisurely start to Sunday. Actually, every day has a pretty leisurely start. We had our cuppa at Gazette in Balham, stopped at the lovely card shop and bought more cards, then headed across the city to Little Venice. We travelled on the Bakerloo line for part of the journey and I was pleased to see that they still have the lovely Sherlock Holmes tiles on the wall of Baker St Station.

It was a sunny day today and very cold with a biting wind some of the time, but it was lovely to see some sun. Once again we were in a more affluent area with lovely homes. We walked along the canal for a while and it was amazing to see that in just a short distance the landscape changed from elegant homes to old warehouses and then huge modern offices and apartment blocks.

Little Venice

There were lots of narrow boats moored along the canal, sometimes rafted up and sometimes in very nice pens. Only one or two big boats had powered sites. Most of them had to run their engines for power and many had little wood heaters inside. It did not look like comfortable living. However they were right beside Paddington Station so very handy to public transport.

Nice pens, no power

We also saw a couple of interesting foot bridges that could fold up to let boats through. Clever designs but in spots where very few boats would ever pass.

The rolling bridge

Lunch was at Zizzis and I ordered a hanging chicken skewer. I was very surprised when it arrived at the table and was actually hanging on a wrought iron stand. You could slide the chicken down and drop it into the dish of sauce below. Looked strange, tasted great.

Hanging skewer!