Last week was all about mug cakes, the ultimate comfort food, baked to perfection in your fire-proof microwave and enjoyed in the safety of your very own gyp room – talk about mollycoddling. This week it is time to branch out beyond the narrow confines of college kitchens, beyond formal swaps to distant locations such as Girton, and indeed out of Cambridgeshire altogether. However many deadlines and commitments you may have preying on you, sometimes you just need to escape the bubble, and what better destination is there than London, less than an hour and ten pounds away if you choose your trains wisely?

We all know what a fine city the capital is in terms of galleries, clubs, and high-street shopping, but this is not ‘Anna’s culture corner’: instead, I bring to you the culinary gem of central London, Camden Market. Think of the food provision at any standard May Ball, then extend it to cover most of the world, and you have a more or less accurate picture of Camden Market in mind. Hidden away by Camden Lock, and only at a walking distance from King’s Cross, it is a paradise of street food in all its forms, from bagels to posh burgers, vegan wraps to succulent Polish sausages – and to continue with the May Ball analogy, even the compulsory mac ‘n cheese and hog roast are featured.

‘Overwhelming for a beginner’ is an understatement when I look back at my first time. I wanted to taste anything and everything, which is made very possible by a plethora of free samples (there is an Italian flat bread stall that is particularly generous). To soften the blow for anyone planning on losing their Camden culinary virginity, I bring to you my top three savoury picks along with some bites of dessert, shortlisted based on all the times I have been sampling hundreds of foods instead of typing thousands of words.

The first stop on my food tour explores the flavours of South America, neatly packed into arepas. These are Venezuelan and Colombian corn-based flatbreads filled to the brim with culinary goodness. Black beans, plantains (a larger sort of banana used for cooking), avocado, and cheese feature in my favourite vegetarian version, all stuffed into bread fried at the stall while you are waiting. The carnivores among us can spike their arepas with one of the many meat options, built on the same base as the veggie one. Help yourself to lashings of delicious yoghurt sauce to complete your scrumptious South-American experience; it is perhaps not the neatest eat, but it is well worth the mess.

The next leg of our journey continues with bread-type sustenance, this time from India. Roti House offers tandoori-style mixtures of vegetables, meat, and your choice of spicyness, gently embraced by a fresh naan bread wrap – simple but oh-so-tasty. At this stall, not all choices are equal, though: the tikka-flavoured tandoori chicken only works if you really love chicken and KFC is your idea of heaven because of the density of the meat. My recommendation is the potato curry – it was well-received even by my usually religiously carnivorous companion and is sure to keep you going for the rest of your day in London, right up to catching that late train back to Cambridge.

Our final destination is perhaps not as exotic as the first two, but who would not love a bowl of pasta? Your standard Sainsbury’s spinach and ricotta ravioli has got nothing on Crazy for Pasta. Let your mouth engage in a wet dream while watching the cooks roll out fresh pasta dough, ready to be boiled just for you. The menu of sauce options seems to go from one tour de force to another: if I am forced to pick (as I always eventually am!), the butter and sage in all its simplicity really compliments the flavour of the fresh pasta.

If after your tour of world cuisine you still want to sweeten the deal with, well, something sweet, I would recommend one of the many stalls churning out churros, those elongated doughnuts filled with caramel or chocolate sauce. The crêpes are also well worth the queue, although somewhat generic when it comes to fillings; for a not-so-readily available option, try the Dutch pancakes – these are essentially bite-sized bits of puffy pancake, perfected with a fine coating of icing sugar.

There will always be essays to write, but why not make those culinary dreams come true and treat yourself to a day out at a pre-May Ball experience? I am certainly planning on a swift return – there is a brigadeiro stall (go and find out for yourself what they are!) that has gone unexplored for too long…