London - day 2


Rounditty, rounditty, round...

Wednesday morning, first stop: St. Paul's Cathedral. We'd tried to go the night before, but it was closed, there was a reception or something. But they'd had the bells ringing, and it was just beautiful to hear the sound echo off absolutely everything nearby. mmmm......
So we got up bright and early, and, after some delay due to the lack of banks being open (grr), we made it to the cathedral. Looked aruond inside a LOT, then headed up the stairs to the top. Ali found part way up that the height was too much for her - but Diana and I continued on.
These are some of the black iron, spiral staircases that were inside the top somewhere. Much more impressive in person, but still sorta cool looking here. And that's Diana, in case you'd forgotten. :-)


diana in the middle!!!

We took this picture when we were partway up the dome. Not quite at the top - those pics are next - but it's a good distance from the ground, as you can see. Even from this height, the view is quite impressive. And this, of course, is Diana.


stickin' london back together

This is one of the many angles of view from the top of St. Paul's. As you can see, this has been pieced together from 2 pics... That water on the left is the Thames River. And that street is the one with the Cheshire Cheese (no, I'm not explaining that one again, see day 1 if you're confused and curious). Hey, that glass building (on the crack) is in the picture above! Crazy...


me at the top!!

Me at the top of St. Paul's - that's the Thames in the background there. Ahhhh, the haze of a humid day in the city.


pidgeons pidgeons everywhere

OK, so this one didn't piece together as well as the one nearer the top... but you get the idea. This is the fountain in Trafalgar Square, and of course many many people and even more pidgeons surrounding it.


ta daaaaa!

Well, we kinda stumbled across Canada House... thought we'd take a picture... didn't go inside... But I do like the picture! :-)


that's where the queen lives, i hear

Well, we decided to go see Buckingham Palace - one of those "must see" things, right? So we walked... a long way... and ended up here when we decided to try and find a washroom. No luck. Only the "special" people in the parade got to pee that day. Oh yes and did I mention that today was the parade for the Queen Mum's 100th birthday? Yes yes. Absolute f#@&ing chaos. That's why we couldn't pee - because the parade people were taking up all the places in this (St. James) park that were normally public. Inculding the washrooms. And security wouldn't let us go. Dammit, we should've peed in the river when we had the chance.
But this was just the beginning.


gates gates gates gates

Here we are at the palace gates. Finally. You would not believe how many tourists we had to move, how many times we had to say, "excuse me, we're taking a picture here"... and dammit a whole group of *other* people had just done it, and we'd stayed out of the way for them. But they were the worst, just kept floating into the edges... oh well. It got taken, and without any of them. Thank you, lady who took this for us! (L-R: me, Ali, Diana)


bwa ha ha ha...

Ok, so this time piecing it together didn't really work... I tried to edit out the colour difference, but just don't have the patience and/or skill. Too bad.
This is taken from beside the statue thing in front of the palace. It *almost* fit in the picture... but not quite. rrr.


ew, like, mall rats

Well, it kinda loses some of the sense of depth once it's on the computer screen... the actual picture looks really cool.
This is "the mall" - that huge long road in front of the palace, the one that takes ages to drive down, let alone walk like we did. This is taken from that same statue in front of the palace.


big ben... woo.

This is, in case you hadn't noticed, Big Ben. We kinda stumbled across it in our journey. See, we'd been trying to find an underground station that *wasn't* closed from bomb threats. We wanted to get out of the hell that surrounded the palace (I mean, we walked in a circle for an HOUR!) and get to BP House. "Ok, if we keep walking in one direction, we're bound to find something". This is what we found. Along with Westminster Abbey. And more underground stations. That were closed. And more tourists. And a heck of a long way to walk without water. Yeah.


escalate this!!

Here's Ali and Diana on the escalator that lead down to one of the underground stations. I'm not sure which one, but somehow I suspect it's Picadilly... rrr... we spent far too long in that station the day of our transit fiasco. It was packed because it was a connector station between two lines, and it was the easiest (haha) way of getting around all the nonsense near Westminster. We watched 3 trains come and go, packed absolutely full. But on the plus side, we did get to laugh, watching some moron get his head caught in the door of the train.


Intro >> Bury #1 >> London (day 1) >> London (day 2) >> Stratford-Upon-Avon >> Bury #2 >>
Wales (w/toboggans) >> Batley >> Bury #3 >> the Lake District >> Final Notes



This page added on September 8 / 00.


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