Sunday 22 January -- Mostly a pictures post

For a pretty good description of what I did Sunday, see this post that I actually wrote that night. This post that you're reading is mostly pictures.
These pictures are actually from when I got back from Bath, but that post already had like 50 pictures, so...

I think this is the Charing Cross thing, but I'm really not sure.

I certainly don't see the however many crosses there were supposed to be or whatever.

Ah! Twinings! I found it!

Ye Olde Cock Tavern. Established in 15 forty-something.

St Pauls!

Either clever or just wrong.

 Okay, now it's Sunday pictures. I saw this while making my way to St Paul's half an hour late for the service, box of Kleenex under my arm, chips on the mind.

The sunrise... It was pretty, but I still hate sunrises.

I thought this was a real bird and that it was just really windy six stories up, but no. It's kind of windy up there, but that's not a real bird.

Statues outside St Pauls.

Another shot of St Pauls. It's really pretty.

Dome.

Also, random spiky thing.

I think this is a routemaster bus.

They're the super old double decker buses that are immortalised as coin banks and pencil sharpeners around the world.

 This next section is from the Harry Potter tour that I went on with Megan and Gina after mass at Westminster.

Joke from the Arts in Christianity study tour (Megan and Gina's group): It's cigar shaped!
Because their tour guide book always said that everything was cigar shaped when telling them where to look.

This is a cool place in its own right, but it also featured in the first Harry Potter movie.

This was also in Harry Potter movies, but I really like it that the curved side has the door.

Ah! The great fire of 1666 monument! Allegedly the tallest freestanding column in at least europe at 222 feet. 

Tower Bridge from the London Bridge.

Shakespeare's brother is buried somewhere in here. It's been a site of worship since pretty much forever, but it would get burned down or rebuilt and all the graves got kind of shuffled around and the markers were lost. 

Bangers are sausages. But this is still hilarious because I am five.

The big London Dragon! I tried to take a picture of it on New Year's Eve, but the bus was moving.

I appreciate the tube escalators when I look at this picture. Otherwise, I'd have been walking all those stairs and probably falling.

This is the second attempt to get into Twinings. The light was better, so I took more pictures.

It's older than America! And I drink that tea...

And they have a crest.

That is the royal courts of justice. As it says in the picture below. But this is a magnificent building.

There we go.

After this round of pictures, we went to Moot, then to Blackfriars Tavern.

This picture, I actually took Monday morning. I was so ticked by the fact that I couldn't get to Twinings and I'd been in the same city for a week that I decided to try to get there about the same time that it opened (8:30) and back before my taxi was scheduled (9:00). Getting there was no problem, but the tube runs differently back, and I ended up waiting fifteen minutes before my line came and got out at King's Cross (and into cell reception so that I could call the taxi service, apologise, and ask for a reschedule) at 9:15. They were not amused, but the driver didn't overcharge. Which was good, since I only had one £10 note anyway.

I hadn't noticed this mosaic in the entry before.

I would do more narration, but I feel that being removed from the situation by over two weeks, my commentary is less valid. The commentary from the post I linked at the beginning is pretty good, and I stand by it. I'll do some reflecting in the post for the trip back. Which should go up soon. If not tonight, then it'll be up this weekend (homework is going to be intense in the next three days; I don't have my books yet, so I'm a bit limited in how much I can be responsible right now. It's really annoying, since I'm totally in the mood for spec and inorganic homework, and I am literally unable to do it.

Friday 20 January -- Old Stuff in London

"Today, I walked by St Paul's Cathedral, took pictures of the Old Bailey, saw some cool stuff in the British Museum, first-bumped an ancient egyptian statue, walked through the Tower of London and went to evensong at Westminster Abbey."


I have pictures of these on my computer now. Here they come!

This was on Great Ormond Street. I'm not sure what it's for, and I've seen similar enclosures elsewhere in London.

This was in front of the "Ladies" whatsit.

This is a London dragon. Later in the week, I got a picture of the big one on Fleet Street/The Strand, but these little guys mark the main streets in and out of the City of London proper, or it might be called the Borough of London. I forget.

This is the Old Bailey. I read a lot about it in English Lit 1700-1789 and more practical documents from its records in English Social History 1500-1750. 

The statue on top is so ominous.

It's still the central criminal court. There were lots of people lined/queued up outside, but I didn't think it would be appropriate to take their pictures.

Justice with her sword and scales on top of the Old Bailey.

This is St Paul's Cathedral. Very big, imposing, and has a big dome. I poked my head in, but it was ridiculously expensive for a tour.

 This was all seen before 11. I developed a pattern in the hostel of falling asleep around 21:00 and waking up between 5 and 7 AM which haunts me still. Actually, I wake up a lot during the night; I'm not sure why that persists as no one comes in and talks loudly in french right by my bed between midnight and 3 AM.
At 11, I went to the British Museum to meet up with the Whitworth group again. I hit up the tourist store outside for something for Andrew and found him a "My sister when to London and all I got was this lousy shirt" shirt with a british flag on it for authenticity. Then we went through Egypt, China, a little bit of India, and Japan.
I fist-bumped a statue in the Egypt section. You'll see why it was so appealing:

He was clearly waiting for a reciprocating fist bump.

This is my favourite painting. I mostly like it for the wave, as I'd never really noticed the mountain lurking  in there. It's a very famous Japanese print, and I'm not sure if this is the original, and if it is, how the British Museum got their hands on it.

The Tower of London. I think the whole thing is the Tower, since there are several towers inside the walls.
It was expensive to get in, but so worth it. I saw the crown jewels and also the place where lots of people were beheaded. 

The Tower Bridge! Not London bridge, as many are wont to assume.

I would have taken a million more pictures, but my camera was full. It was a good day. After the Tower, we went to Westminster Abbey for evensong, which was okay. The choir was good, but I prefer men's choirs to consist mainly of men's voices. All I could hear of this one was the kids, who sound oddly feminine. I believe that this was also the day that I tried "apple and beetroot juice" (beetroot being the british word for beet), and it was pretty good. I was mostly intrigued by the pink and the oddity of seeing what is generally a vegetable reserved for the table (unlike carrots, which go well in juices) in juice.

Thursday 19 January 2011 -- The Day the Laptop Vanished

This is also the day that I went to Westminster Abbey (and met up with the Whitworth pre-med friends), Buckingham Palace, Regent's Park, and the Sherlock Holmes Museum at 221 Baker Street.
Pictures! I'll do my best on the captions, because it was about two weeks ago.

I walked down Oxford street (down which you cannot go 90, although the demon Crowley did) and may have also passed SoHo (home of funky little bookshops and interesting inhabitants) on my rather circuitous way to Westminster. Most of my interests in London were of a literary, and often Pratchett-inspired, nature. Speaking of which, I saw either Sir Terry Pratchett himself or a remarkable doppelganger hurrying past me when I left King's Cross station on Wednesday, but he was moving too fast for me to stop, balance my luggage, and ask him for a picture and an autograph.

Edward (possibly "VII" and definitely Victoria's son) built that for Victoria, as people who can read latin would know from the sign. It's basically a huge gate-y thing outside trafalgar square.

I really like this monument. It has all the uniforms and/or trappings of the jobs that women took over in the absence of the men.

There were no pictures allowed inside the Abbey itself, but this is in the chapel outside the abbey and is fairly representative of the architecture inside.

This unremarkable old door is actually THE old door. See below.

See? I love the "most likely" and the comment of a Whitworthian that they could just go around slapping "oldest" signs on most old things in London and no one would know any better.

St Stephen's Tower, home of Big Ben the bell. Taken in much better light than on the bus tour.

The houses of Parliament. Just like in Sherlock Holmes! The movie, that is. I'm always impressed by how spiky everything is.

Pelicans and also a heron in the background in St James' Park. There were so many birds.

Shiny statue outside of Buckingham Palace. I think I caught this on the bus tour, but from a different angle through some trees.

There it is. The sometimes home of possibly the most famous people in the whole world, or at least in the western world.

Cool gate, bro.

Bearskin hat! I fail to see the point of those.

This is from the tube station at Baker Street. The little dots that this is made up of are that same silhouette in  miniature.

ZOMG 221B Baker Street OMG OMG.
I don't care if Sherlock Holmes was made up and never lived here, it's a real place that featured prominently in some of my favourite stories.

It was less cool than I had hoped.

Still, we had fun with it. Megan's on the left and Gina took the pictures.

The hat looks lopsided because it is. My hair is not hat-friendly.

I rather suspect that they put that in after the movie, but the attendant indicated that he did that in the books. Of course, she kept referring to everything as if it was real, which irked me.

A pipe collection. I was pleased that not all of them were those funny curved-stem affairs.

I like it that they included all the stuff that would have probably been in the rooms of Sherlock Holmes, had he been real.

This was intriguing. I think it was originally written for east asians, as the first set of descriptions were in asian characters. I don't know enough about them to distinguish language, just cuisine.
Anyway, the brochure thing has some hallmarks of the Holmes craze as well as some lesser-known but more book-common features. It debunks the deerstalker hat myth while pointing out that, yes, Sherlock Holmes did hard drugs.

 More stuff. I didn't photograph the preserved ears. It's anybody's guess as to whether they were real.

THESE. Why are these plants blooming with tropical scents in the middle of January?!

Regent's Park, which features in one of the hallmarks of my childhood, 101 Dalmatians. 

Water feature in Regent's Park. They were everywhere, and very pretty.

I'm not used to the regimented neatness of London parks. I'm more used to the "here's some grass and some trees. Don't hit the trees when you play games, okay?" style of parks.

It was big and had big avenues running through the whole thing.

Griffins? Or just winged lions?

The fact that my laptop was stolen when I got home rather ruined the peace and tranquility of the day, but it's coming back to me now.