Evening walk along the Thames

The day after our trip to the Tate and all of the other adventures, we decided to try to go see the sun set over the Thames and Parliament. We took the tube to the Green Park station and got off. We were a little too late thought, and were in the middle of Green Park as the sun was going down.


This was the most of the sunset that we saw, but it was pretty just the same. The park was a great place to watch, and there were a lot of other people sitting on benches doing the same thing. Unlike Hyde Park, Green Park is more planned. Almost all of the trees are in straight rows, with paths, benches, and street lamps going down the middle. In a way, I kind of like it better. We decided to keep walking to Thames anyway, despite missing the sunset.


There will be more to this post than trees in the park, I swear! But these street lamps were interesting. You will notice that they do not have the normal bulb, but instead are gas fed and have mantles like the coleman lantern you use for camping. This style of streetlamp has been maintained in certain areas of many European cities to preserve a historic look.


This is the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace. It was built in 1911 as a tribute to Queen Victoria who died in 1901.


Westminster Abbey at night.


Here is the clock tower at Houses of Parliament. Most people would call this "Big Ben," which is incorrect. "Big Ben" is actually the name of the bell, not the clock or the tower.


Looking at the Houses of Parliament from the over the Thames.


Kevin and Jessica posing for a picture!


Allow me to explain. My roommate Kevin has a tradition of having his picture taken while jumping in front of various famous places around the world. I'm not sure how this started, but here is the British Parliament edition. While the blue bag on the left is not ours and had been there already, I think it's fitting that there is a bag with an empty bottle in it in this particular shot!


The London Eye! We are definitely going to shell out the money to do this before we leave. We'll do it during the day though when you can actually see something and take pictures. We had dinner at an all you can eat Chinese buffet in the building on the right. The food wasn't great, but we were starving and the price was right. This has pretty much been the case for all of the Chinese buffets we have encountered so far in London - even in Chinatown.


Along the Thames near the Eye there all sorts of attractions. We stopped in a game arcade, passed by the London Aquarium, and got ice cream at one of the many little food stands. There was also this carousel. I like the motion effects that came out in this picture, especially with Kevin's silhouette as he walked towards the edge of the frame on the left.


It was getting late, so we made our way back to the nearest Tube station to take the train home. We crosses another cool pedestrian bridge over the Thames. This one had a rail bridge that was either part of it or built right next to it.


Finally, a nice picture to capture the essence of nightlife along the river.

Post Tate stroll to St. Paul's

The Millennium Bridge connects the Tate Modern with the St. Paul's neighborhood. That's the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral on the left. We decided to check it out when we left the art gallery.


The construction of the bridge is really interesting. It seems to be some sort of modern suspension bridge, but not like any I have ever seen before.


The bridge is heavily used and many tourists take advantage of the wonderful river views by stopping to take pictures (as I have done below).


Looking east, I believe, down the river. You can just barely see the Tower Bridge in the far distance.


Between the river and St. Paul's is an office for the Salvation Army. I include this picture for two reasons. One, it reminds us that it was founded in Britain. Two, what many of us think of as a charitable organization is in fact a Christian-based religion. I don't know if this is common knowledge and somehow my generation missed this memo, but I had no idea that it was a religion until last semester when our reporting professor filled us in. Neither had anyone else in that class. I just found that very interesting, that with all of the red kettle campaign every year during the holidays, that so many people don't know this.


This is the fourth St. Paul's Cathedral to stand on this sight. The previous structured, referred to as "Old St. Paul's" was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. One of my professors shared an interesting story about that. When the fire first broke out and it became obvious that much of the city was at risk of burning, many people brought their most valuable things to St. Paul's Cathedral in the belief that God would protect the church. Ironically, they were right to a degree. The fire did not burn its way into the church. Instead, the heat from the nearby flames melted the lead roof, it collapsed, and the church burned down from the inside out before the actual flames ever reached it.


The current structure was designed by Sir Christopher Wren and was completed between 1675 and 1710. It was unique in that it was the first Cathedral to have ever been designed and built under the watch and within the lifetime of its architect. Wren knew as he designed it that this would become his masterpiece (as it has). His first two proposals were rejected. His third, the one that received approval, called for a minor dome with a tall spire on top of it. But Wren cleverly wrote into the contract that the architect could take minor liberties with the aesthetics of the building during the construction process. So along with other not-so-minor changes, they ended up with a massive dome and no spire. Wren had another trick too. He had a suspicion that he would get halfway done with construction and they would want to cut costs and scale back parts of the design. So to ensure that his masterpiece would be completed the way he wanted, he started construction at the back of the church and worked his way forward. The impressive front of the church is the most important part, so by building that last there was nothing they could do but to let him finish it.


Finally, we returned back to Bloomsbury for a nice dinner out at an Italian restaurant. This actually served as my belated birthday dinner. The restaurant is on the corner of this little pedestrian street called "Sicilian Avenue" that is right across from Bloomsbury Square (the public green at one end of our street). The food was amazing - I had Fettuccine alfredo with a glass of house red wine, and an amaretto ice cream dessert. Hyde Park, Tate Modern, walk through St. Paul's, and dinner out - what a fine way to spend a day.

A visit to the Tate Modern

The walk to the Tate Modern from the Tube station is neat. There are orange street lights that guide you there, and there are all sorts of modern buildings going up in the neighborhood around the museum. This is a new office building.


It looks like this building was inspired by a barn - with the rounded roof and the silo-like towers. I think it is a new residential unit. It's right in front of the entrance to the Tate Modern.


I think this clever barricade is referring to roadwork, but it certainly fits the building in the background as well. This neighborhood is definitely one in transition, and with many of the new buildings appearing to be only a few years old, it seems that the Tate Modern is the force behind the change.


Here is the main entrance to the Tate Modern. Established in 2000, this is latest of addition to the Tate family of art museums. The original is the Tate Britain, which contains more traditional artwork. That one was founded in 1897 as the National Gallery of British Art. The building housing the Tate Modern was built between 1947 and 1963 as the Bankside Power Station, which closed in 1981.


After walking through the front doors, you walk down a long sloping ramp that leads directly into the temporary exhibition hall. Like many public museums in London (and for the most part all of Britain), general admission is free with a recommended donation of three pounds. There are a few exhibits that do require a fee to enter, but usually only one or two at a time.


Apparently putting the "please do not touch" sign on the floor isn't too effective.


This is looking down at the major temporary exhibition space at the end of the main entrance ramp. It is called Turbine Hall because it used to house the electricity generators of the old power plant. It is five stories tall and is used to display specially commissioned large modern works of art. There art in this hall has changed each year in a series sponsored by Unilever. The series was only supposed to last for the first 5 years, but it has been so successful that it has been extended through at least 2012.


This picture is looking up and was taken from the same place that I was standing for the picture above. You can see the remnants from the old power station that were left in place as a tribute to the building's past. I personally found this more interesting that half of the "art" in the museum, but that's just me.


The museum has a very open feel to it, and it very easy to navigate and move from exhibit to exhibit. The quality design aspect of how the building was laid out was the topic of a recent New York Times article. The article was comparing the Tate Modern's building to either the MET or the MOMA in New York (I forget which - it was the one that recently had a major addition that cost a lot of money). The Time's critic was complementing the Tate Modern for spending a lot less money and achieving what he thought was a much better result. The Tate Modern's collections are still on the weak side, however, because of its relative youth - but it is quickly establishing a name for itself.


Looking back at the full Tate Modern building from the Millenium Bridge that carries pedestrians across the Thames to St. Paul's Cathedral. The historic building was at risk of being demolished until the Tate announced in 1994 that the building would become the home of its newly conceived "Tate Modern." The conversion process cost 134 million pounds, and construction started in 1995. It opened to the public in 2000.

Saturday afternoon in Hyde Park

Hyde Park is huge, and at one end of it is this pond. There are hundreds of ducks and other birds, and the benches along the edge are popular during the lunch hour. We brought our lunches to a have a picnic in the park. After 15 minutes of waling looking for an empty bench next to the water, we gave up and moved inward on one of the winding paths.


We found a nice bench that encircled a tree down the path on the left in the picture. A few hundred feet away was a large rock with text carved into it. Kevin went up to look at and it and reported that it was a gift from Norway in honor of the British troops that served in WWII. The British were obviously very thankful for the memorial boulder to have put it in a place of such prominence - on a random path somewhere in the middle of Hyde Park.


No need for those boats here!


I love this picture - those feathers are just so beautiful. That duck knows it too, that why it takes care to maintain perfect grooming!


This mother and her two kids were just too cute. They had made little paper boats and brought them along to put in the pond. I hesitated to take the picture at first because I didn't want to seem like a creeper, but once we got further away they didn't notice me and I couldn't resist.


There are several sections with nice gardens. Here you also see the winding paths that twist and turn all through the park. Around the perimeter there is one big straight path for runners and bikers, as well as a dirt path presumably for horseback riding, but I'm not sure.

Sunday: last day in Edinburgh

This was the view out the back window of our fourth floor hotel room. This section of the new city is heavily residential. The building that our hotel occupied was originally the large house of wealthy aristocrat.


The Elephant House Cafe is where J.K. Rowling started to write the first Harry Potter books. She sat at a table in the back next to a window that offered a clear view of Edinburgh Castle...the inspiration for the Hogwarts castle. We stopped in for lunch.


The view from the edge of the cemetery looking out over rooftops of the old city. I love how the buildings looked like they are stacked together. It was a very nice day - the sky stayed like that all afternoon.


Harry Potter fans will recognize the top name on this tombstone! It is said that author J.K. Rowling found inspiration for several of the name in the series from this cemetery behind the Elephant Cafe. We found this one and I think one more, but I can't remember.


It wouldn't be an official trip to Scotland without someone playing the bagpipes!


Here you are looking out over the train station that runs through the valley in the center of the city, between the new and old sections.


There is a lot of green space between the new and old cities. This is part of a nice long park near the base of the cliff that Edinburgh Castle is built on. On the other side (behind the camera) is the main street through the new city. I took this as we walked back to the hotel to meet and before continuing on to catch the train back to London.