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......
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.
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 of St. Paul's - that's the Thames in the background there. Ahhhh, the haze of a humid day in the city.
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.
Well, we kinda stumbled across Canada House... thought we'd take a picture... didn't go inside... But I do like the picture! :-)
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.
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)
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.
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, 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.
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
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