Saturday adventure, which involves Paddington, canals, house boats, industrial landscape, Bakerloo Line, and a skate park:

We decided to go have a look at Little Venice and surrounding area. When we first got to London, we had a decent chance of going to live there; it didn't happen after the potential flat mates turned us down, but that's different story (of Skype viewings and stupid real estate agents).

So we went by Bakerloo Line to Edgware Road, and started by a classy lunch in a classy American-style diner next to Paddington Basin, with a burger, a pizza, and two pints of Pilsner Urquell (ohh ahh the pleasure). And guess what, even the 'ordinary' burger, pizza and beer were much better than most of the things you can have in the most expensive restaurants in East or South London. It's just a question of money I guess.

You see, Paddington Basin looks like one of the more expensive, more posh places in London, not the same style as Chelsea, but just very obviously expensive. Perhaps less 'aristocratic' than Chelsea and more 'expat'? I don't know. But you just can smell money from that place, the pretty houses, the clean streets, the greenery, the water which is crystal clear and with no rubbish on the bottom of the basin.

So we walked from Paddington Basin towards Little Venice (which has a very Parisian feeling, especially in rainy winter), and then past this lovely boats-everywhere place to... Willesden Junction.

Little Venice looks less posh than Paddington Basin, but still reasonably posh, and reasonably expensive. More relaxed maybe. There are still nice clean streets, trees, and stuff. And obviously the boats. The water is not so polished as in Paddington Basin, but it's still nice and clean, no oil, no rubbish, just some 'wild' fowl, and cafés in some of the boats. A nice place to hang out in the summer I guess.

If you walk along the canal a bit further, you see that the landscape changes gradually. Suddenly there are less nice houses and less well-maintained house boats with smoke coming from their little chimneys. (The Paddington Basin and Little Venice boats are inhabited and well maintained and obviously also cosy warm places, despite being boats, on water, in the middle of winter.)

You get more council estates (...if you live in London for at least two weeks, you can tell a council estate, I assure you) - initially just one, then another one, then two... You get the picture.

You get more boats which look less than pristine, and gradually more and more rubbish, in the water as well as on the banks. You see more boats which use some slightly dodgy / smelly stuff to burn. And so on. In combination with drizzle and early February light, it looked very post-apo and post-industrial!

You also get more and more weed smell, and more of these people who look like youth gang. More mud and less nice cobblestones. Less of well maintained high rise buildings, and more of apparently poorer homes, with no green stuff on their concrete gardens.

Then, homes gradually give way to industrial architecture and warehouses. And some rail stuff. A lot of rail stuff in fact; it looks like one of the biggest rail gathering I've ever seen in this country.
There is also more rubbish, beer cans, cider cans, disposable coffee cups, pieces of furniture, and toilets. (I am not kidding. We have seen remnants of at least two plastic toilets. Seriously!)

Because it was raining, and it was cold, and it was not a nice walk any more, we decided to go to Underground / Overground station of Willesden Junction.

First train to arrive was 'a London Underground service to Elephant and Castle', aka Bakerloo Line. So we boarded the train. (Note. Have you ever noticed how absurdly small the Bakerloo trains are? Fun fact: Willesden Jct has a normal railway platform, and you actually have to bend and make a step down to board a Bakerloo train. Which from the normal size platform looks like a doll train or something. You often can tell that the train is small when you travel through the city, but compared to a grown-up platform, it's just striking.)

We thought that in 30 min, we'd be home.

Nope!

Next stop, Kensal Green, and the infamous 'we are being held at a red signal, we should be moving shortly' announcement. Shortly meant something like 15 min. Then someone finally lose patience, and as the driver explained, the signal is faulty and stuck and a security procedure was being adopted. The train started moving, then stopped abruptly (because it was moving despite the red signal!), and then, when the brakes were finally pressurized, started moving again, but only at 5 mph. The driver hoped to go 5 mph right to the next station.

Nope!

There was another red signal, and it was so close to Queen's Park that we had to obey Queen's Park people's authority. And they did not agree with us moving. Why, nobody knows. (The driver was a good guy and he kept us updated.) Another 20 min later, we finally got a go, and went to Queen's Park.

In the meantime, it was nice to see that I was not the only one p**ed off:
- There was this guy who looked like a hip hop gang member. He was making a phone call and mentioned 'a fucking red signal bullshit' (sic). I couldn't agree more!
- There was this very white-trash-looking lady. She was speaking on a phone in Polish, which I can sort of understand, and saying something like this: 'We are kurwa stuck in the Tube kurwa already for an hour kurwa not moving anywhere kurwa I am late kurwa but stuck in the Tube kurwa...' You get the idea. Then, she ended her tirade with 'Willesden Junction chuj' and that was it. (Chuj means dick, if you need to know.)

Luckily, once we reached Queen's Park, the rest of the journey was all right.

But mind you. Willesden Junction and the surroundings, oh my, it looks so... deprived...