It was a long drive - took two hours to get to our drop off point. They played The Devil Wears Prada on the way. I was able to follow the gist of it but I'm afraid I missed the more subtle nuances... and I'm ok with that. When we finally got there, the bus dropped us off in front of a nondescript wall. No landmarks or anything nearby to let us know where we were... so I asked, and we were at Hay Market, and if we wanted they would show us how to get to Chinatown. Thinking that would be a more well-known place for Lisa to meet me, I went along and texted her. Turns out she knew where Hay Market was too : P In fact, that's where we'll be seeing Phantom in two weeks! Anyway, Lisa found me with no trouble and we began wandering about Chinatown. But it was really crowded and we couldn't see anything, though we could hear a parade. The place looked neat:
This is Chinatown all decorated for Chinese New Year!
But we moved on pretty quickly. There were supposed to be some interesting things happening in Trafalgar Square, so we went on that way. The square was even more crowded than Chinatown, though - approaching German Christmas Village levels. We went into the National Portrait Gallery instead and amused ourselves by making up stories for the people in the painting - the ones that didn't already have stories, that is.
This is one of my favorite paintings from the gallery, but it's hard to tell why from this image...
This is the upper right hand corner of the painting blown up. Even here it's hard to really see the maniacal glint in the cat's eye... trust me, it's really funny.
Anyway, from there we headed out for some lunch, and then to Piccadilly Circus:
It's basically Times Square, London, complete with McDonald's advertisments.
And it's got a fountain with huge horses.
We saw some odd telephone booths - they were black instead of red!!
Lisa decided that the phone booths were angry. I decided that they were sad.
Here are some normal, cheerful red ones!!
Next we went through Green Park. Very creative name... pretty accurate too.
This is a circle of trees in Green Park. I call it the Giant Ring.
Just through Green Park is Buckingam Palace! Or, as I like to call it, Buckingham Building-that-doesn't-look-like-a-castle.
These are the gates. Very impressive.
This is a guard. What happened to the red uniforms and big fuzzy hats? Possibly the same thing that happened to those black telephone booths!! O.O
Here's a shot of the facade between the bars of the gate.
And one taken from a distance.
You can see the Eye of London from the square in front of Buckingham Palace... physically, it's bigger than Sauron's, though not quite as scary.
You can see the Eye of London from the square in front of Buckingham Palace... physically, it's bigger than Sauron's, though not quite as scary.
This is a really tall monument to Queen Victoria in the square in front of Buckingham. This picture was me standing at the base and looking up. She's enormous.
The monument from a more reasonable distance
Here's me in front of a random weird looking statue. Lisa and I sat here for a while to rest.
Then we moved on, heading for Hyde Park.
This is a random arch on the way to Hyde Park. It is NOT Marble Arch, but if it was I'd have an interesting story to relate, thanks to Lisa. Marble Arch, which this is not, was built as an entryway to someplace for some kind of duke. But when it was built, the Duke's carriage was too big to fit through the arch. So they picked up the Marble Arch, put it down randomly somewhere else, and built the Duke's obese carriage a bigger arch. I saw Marble Arch... that carriage must have been HUGE.
Look, they put helpful signs in the street for us poor tourists who have no idea where to look so we don't get hit by a car.
Here is the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens! We had to wait a while for a bunch of dopey people to stop climbing all over it, but we finally got a clear shot : ) While we waited, we watched some pretty amusing birds jump on each other... birds look funny when they pop back up from underwater like corks.
Here is me with Peter ^.^ I almost bought a copy of Peter Pan today to keep with my tradition of buying a copy from every country I'm in, but books are SO expensive here, I couldn't bring myself to do it just yet. Maybe when I have more pounds on my Waterstone's card.
The plaque in front of the statue. You can't really read it, but it says who sculpted the statue, and talks a bit about James Barrie.
This is a squirrel talking to a fairy on the back of the statue!! : )
We finished up looking around Kensington Gardens, and decided to catch a bus back to the Hay Market area because we were tired from all that walking! We decided to take the bus to Oxford square, and it turned out to be a bus painted entirely black with Phantom of the Opera adverts all over it! Neat! We rode the bus up Oxford street, and therefore got to see all the shops from a nice safe distance from all the people. There are many retail stores and lots of familiar brand names... Anyway, we got off pretty close to Hay Market, with about an hour and a half to kill before my bus came. So we went into a Caffe Nero and got tea and hot chocolate and sat and talked for the remainder of the time.
Look, a pic of the two of us together! : ) I'm bad at centering...
Then the bus came, and Lisa and I parted ways, but we will see each other again in two weeks.
On the ride back, they played a movie which I think was called The Perfect Man, but which only held my interest because I couldn't see anything out of the windows... when the bus dropped us off, there was thick thick fog. I couldn't even see the tops of the Towers. I went and got a panini because I was too tired to cook and I wanted something hot. I was planning on getting tea too, because my throat really hurts, but the shop was already closed. Ah well. Food and a hot shower made a big difference...
And that was my adventure for today! Tomorrow... class... wheeee
It looks like you guys had so much fun!!!! ^_^
ReplyDelete