London

This last weekend I finally made it to London after a month in England. I went with some friends, Dave Perry, Andrea Roundy, and Lindsay Shepard, and stayed with some others at their house in London. After dropping off our things at their house, it was dark when we got to London so we got some good night shots and just walked around and finally ended up in Chinatown where we ate dinner. The whole weekend was good, but we didn't get to go around to see many sights the three days I was there. Here are a few pictures of what we did and saw:

*Quick note: some of the pictures look blurry, but when you expand them they don't look blurry. For example, check out the before and after of the picture of Big Ben

First, the classic, identical rows of homes. I took this one because one of the homes was out of place; it was partially white:


After we dropped off our stuff, we left with Angus (whose place we stayed at) and it was dark when we got into London itself, but we got some good shots, like this one of Big Ben (you can even see that it was only 5:35, but already very dark):


After turning to the left of the last picture, we walked onto the bridge over the Thames and I got some good pictures of the Eye, the large ferris wheel in London:


We turned around and Angus took this picture of the rest of us in front of Big Ben (Me, Dave, Andrea, Lindsay). Not the clearest picture because we didn't use the tripod for it, but it works:


We kept going on the bridge past the Eye and ended up here:


It was mostly weird graffiti, but some of it was pretty cool and well done (and Lindsay and Angus pictured):


Andrea, Lindsay, Angus, and Dave walking through:


But here is my favorite:


Then we walked to Chinatown and had dinner:


Then we walked to Trafalgar Square, where a gay lesbian etc rally was going on:


And right behind where I took the last picture, the National Gallery, which we unfortunately didn't go in:


From there we walked to Buckingham Palace:


From there we walked to the Tube and went home. Saturday (Halloween) we got a little bit of daytime picture taking on our way to Brick Lane, a road of Indian restaurants where they have people out on the street trying to entice you to eat at their restaurant with better food deals. First, once out of the tube we walked past the Nauvoo Temple:


We met up with a couple other people, Hailey and Amanda, and stopped by a couple of small art galleries on the way to Brick Lane:


This gallery is the work of the artist who does the stuff for the band Gorillaz (Hailey and Amanda are in the back left looking at something and Dave is on the far right):


Almost at Brick Lane, we walked by a group performing for the holiday, which later marched up and down the street performing (I think it was Bedknobs and Broomsticks but I don't really know):



We had some pretty good Indian food at Brick Lane, then it was dark and we took the Tube and went close to Hyde Park and walked around in the area, first past Royal Albert Hall:


Then we walked into Hyde Park and took some more night shots over the river that runs through it, and you can see the Eye (it's the green lights near the middle right of the picture over the trees):


Dave:


Black and White Dave, Andrea, and me by Dave:


And I just like this picture:


And then we went back to Angus' house. The next day after church we walked around the V&A (Victoria and Albert) Museum which is very close to the Hyde Park Church building. Here is a shot from a room with plaster casts of monuments and things from around Rome (mostly). The two biggest columns are casts of the monument to Trajan (identical, except one has the base cast as well), but the original statue was torn down by the Christians in the 16th century and replaced with a statue of St. Peter, unfortunately:


And then it was back to Reading and homework for me.