Flower @Columbia road

Columbia Road is famous for the flower market. There are a lot of shops (stalls?) in the road. It's only held on Sundays from 8am until 3pm.

The place is a bit hard to get there.  The nearest station is probably Hoxton, Overground station.
I walked from Shoreditch High street, Overground station.
But, actually there are a lot of people holding bunches of flowers, so just try to find those people!

Chrysanthemum - not only symbol of Royal family but also funeral flowers in Japan!

Most of shop owners are East Enders ;) Love their accent

I love Hydrangea. The pot was £5!

All the photos which I took hiddenly (how can I say in English??) I didn't have gut to take photos in front of owners. I'm sure they don't mind, but I am too shy to ask!

The place has lovely & independent cafes as well.

Towards the end of days, there are not much selection sometimes, but the price of a lot of flowers get reduced.  I went there last Sunday, the Orchid was sold only £5.
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Columbia Road market
Bethnal Green, London E2
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A Night at the Natural History Museum

Last Friday, my friend took me to the event after hours at Natural History Museum.

I thought the museum did this night events because of the film of Night at the Museum... probably it's true. But, this event is held only once a year! If you missed it this year, check 28th September next year. It seems this event is held on the same day!

The entrance of the museum by my sh*t mobile phone!

The venue was great! ... but don't count on me. I love anything 'night events' at museum!
There are a lot of events going on. The highlight was probably 'to collect stamps'. It sounds not exciting, but if you collect 5 stamps from the different sections, you can apply the 'sleeping over at night museum in October'. How exciting is that!

I didn't eat, but there were foods provided. It looks Mezzo style. I don't know the museum's deli and restaurants were opened.

My friend's friend works at there, and I and my friend had a chance to attend her presentation. Basically, she researches some types of flower seeds. She sometimes has to go jungle to collect seeds... wao! She sounds an Indiana Jones but flower version!

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Natural History Museum
The nearest tube station is South Kensington. Follow the sign of V&A. Get out the exit, and just 1 minute by walk.
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Gherkin - Open House in 2012 -

Every year, I joined the Open House in London.

Open House is a two-day event which has been held normaly on September throughout in London, and a lot of buildings including even normally closed to general, will be free to the public. (I've heard you need to pay to enter some buildings, but it's very little like £3.)

This year, I finally managed Gherkin (30 St Mary Axe) !
Obviously, Gherkin is the most popular venue through the Open House, but sometimes it's not on the list. It may be the last chance to enter Gherkin, so I and my friends went to there.

Gherkin from the top floor

Ceiling

Absolutely amazing!
Maybe, that's not that impressive, but to enter Gherkin, we had to wait for

4 HOURS!
(Plus, it rained heavily, so we were all soaked in the rain...)

This probably made me believe it's worth going...

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The Open House for Gherkin was 9am to 5pm in 2012
10 minutes tour with 30 people
We could see only ground floor and top floor.
You must bring your Photo ID.

We started to queue 8.20ish am, and we were probably 570th people who queued.
According to one of a volunteer, they stopped people from queueing around 10am.
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