The first night we walked along the canal near Ross's place and ended up at a brewery where you can sit right on the canal and watch swans swim and riverboats just pull up and join you.
I nearly forgot it was our Independence Day (from them!) until I saw this in a park.
I do love the street art here.
An old market downtown with tons of stalls with huge blocks of cheeses, sausages, fresh caught fish and loads of other goods. We popped in to sample cheeses after seeing Macbeth at a recreation of Shakespeare's Globe Theater!
That would be Ross sitting on a fence I would not find too comfortable!
After seeing Macbeth, we wandered around the gigantic Tate Modern to look at art.
This area of London was very touristy and had tons of neat place to eat & drink and watch street performers.
I am in love with the Houses of Parliament building! It's so intricate and has awesome metalwork.
Impressive Westminster Abbey.
The impressive street leading up to Buckingham Palace.
Didn't go in time for the changing of the guards, but I did see this guy marching around at his post in a very dramatic fashion!
Great shot, but these phone booths just smell so bad inside, I couldn't shut the door.
After many hours of walking, Ross and I popped into London's oldest wine bar, Gordon's, where you are basically drinking in the old wine cellar. I think the building's plaque said late 1800s. On the walls inside were very old newspaper articles about kings and queens and wars from the last century or two.
They sell both! Why? Don't know!
My good friend Jack, another PSFer, met us in the park for a picnic! It's been over two years, but really doesn't feel like it.
After many hours in a sunny park, we popped into a pub for dinner and delicious beer (and great wall decor!)
I love how they say funny things like "Mind your head!" or "Mind the gap, please!" when you get off the train.
My friend Pete, who used to drive around with me in Peru picking up used veggie oil from the restaurants to make into bio-diesel. He works at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, so we visited him there and walked around to see one of the world's largest collection of wrought iron, as well as a whole lot of cool old art and parts of buildings that have been demolished, but the decorative parts salvaged.
Near the V&A, there's Hyde Park and Kensington Park, where we got to see this cool temporary pavilion by a Japanese architect. You could climb on it and feel a bit like you might fall through, it was cool!
In that same park was the very cool memorial for Princess Diana, which was a footpath with these emblems which led to this huge marble ring that was a big fountain and the water flows around it over differing textures of marble. It was covered in kids playing and people relaxing - probably the best memorial I've ever seen and I think something Diana would have loved!
On our way back from seeing all these museums and art, we popped into a dark pub for a couple beers and snacks with Quinten, a Belgian friend from PSF. It was cool to see that he is still seeing a girl he met in Peru while we were volunteering!
One of my days I took a bus down to Bournemouth, on the south coast, to see my friends Liam and Kitty, who grew up there and went to PSF together. And surprisingly I got to also see Suzanne (above), who got to PSF the day before me and was my roommate for a couple months there. She JUST got back from Australia and I didn't know I'd get to see her at all. So cool!
Bournemouth has a really pretty beach! Most of the year their population is around 170,000, but it reaches nearly a million during the summer. English people and other foreigners take their holiday here.
That Japanese sculpture is amazing!
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