Click on images below to enlarge:
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| Houses of Parliament
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| The top of the Houses of Parliament building, a.k.a. Westminster Palace.
The flag flew in a picture-perfect way.
| The entrance, its bay windows, and its bay, uh, non-windows (window-less
support structures).
Ignoring the entrance, I found that if I just
looked at the windows themselves, I found their scale hard to judge.
| The northern wing and its cathedral window.
| Westminster Hall, built in the 11the century, is the oldest part of the
complex. A precursor to cathedral design and one of the first examples
of architects figuring out how to build big, it was the largest enclosed
building in Europe at the time. In its early days, the hall had
semi-permanent rooms and shops (which would be removed when a big trial
or something had to take place).
There's stained glass at the end
of the hall, but it's washed out in this picture.
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| Statues overlooking the hall.
| The apse at the end of the hall.
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Sorry, pictures weren't allowed in the rest of Westminster Palace /
Houses of Parliament. :(
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| Elsewhere in Westminster
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| Big Ben's design emphasizes the vertical.
| My lunch of bangers and mash: sage & pork sausages topped with a red
wine marmalade, all atop mashed potatoes and drizzled with a red wine
gravy. Decent/good; exactly as expected. This was at a random pub, Old
Shades, that we decided to eat in after our tour of the Houses of
Parliament.
| The Charring Cross tube/rail station has a remarkably attractive facade.
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| Chelsea
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| Sloane Gardens, an attractive row of brick houses just off Sloane Square
in Chelsea.
| Though Sloane Square is a stone plaza surrounded by busy roads, I
thought it would nice at night due to the lights in the trees
(especially the purple ones) and the couple of star-star-shaped lights
hanging along the plaza's central axis. (I spotted two when I took this
picture.) The building afar also has strings of twinkling lights.
Later, I got to photograph the square at night.
| Inside the Holy Trinity Church.
| While walking away from the church, I read in my guide book that it has
unusual railings. I turned and used the 10x zoom on my camera to get a
picture and take a look. I thought I deleted this picture after I
looked on my camera, but when I downloaded my pictures later I found I
hadn't deleted it. Only then did I notice the jolly guy in the
bottom-right--"hello!"--and decided I shouldn't delete it.
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I stumbled upon a march to boycott Harrods because it sells coats made
from animal fur. There were lots of police (several dozen) escorting
the marchers (a hundred I'd guess). It looks like the march backed up
traffic for several blocks.
| Part of Duke of York Square is decorated for the holidays.
| I found a food market in Duke of York Square; this is a view down one of
the aisles.
| A variety of baklavas.
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| The Rainforest Cafe stand has cool-looking vegetarian wraps.
| Fudges that come in an assortment of colors and flavors.
| One stand only makes cakes with rum.
| The Saatchi Gallery adjoins the Duke of York Square. These balls, by
the way, have electric cords running to them; I bet they're lit at
night.
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| The old Royal Hospital, as seen down the central path through Burton's
Court (a park with athletic fields).
| In this Georgian section of St Leonard's Terrace, I like the inviting
way the lamp in the second house from the left glows out of the
foliage-surrounded windows. By the way, the leftmost house has a sign
that Bram Stoker lived there.
| A sample of some of the shops on King's Road, just to show the look of
the clothing stores arrayed there.
| Another sample.
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| A double-decker wedding bus. Notice the table of champagne by the
doors. I actually saw a few of these buses around Chelsea this day.
| St Luke's church.
| St Luke's Grounds look like a nice place to walk and to sit.
| A panorama of Sloane Square at night. It was prettier than I'd
imagined. (Compare with my
description of the same site during the daytime.) I drastically
underestimated the number of lit hanging stars.
The Peter Jones
department store, hung with strings of lights, directly behind me, was
pretty as well.
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| A single shot of the middle of the square (just in case the panorama
didn't stitch together properly).
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| Regent Street at night
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| Regent Street at night.
| Ditto. Look at the size of the net of lights hung over the street.
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