London

I haven’t updated in ages! A weekend in London, UK after my long 3 months in Ireland. London was something else. It was a huge city with so much history under your feet. When I was there the city felt a lot like New York, minus all the tall skyscrapers. One thing I have to say about London, it is a huge city. Every city I’ve been to in Europe, there were parts about every city that I loved. London, was a city I would have loved to work in. I loved how the modern industrious was mixed in with the old buildings in London. One of the things that reminded me of New York was the large ad display reminded me of Times square.

Well I guess New York was influenced by the structure of London, but since I been to New York City first, so everything reminds me of New York. The city is well lit up at night as well. London’s Underground (subway system), also known as the Tube, is insane! There are tunnels underground interwoven to endless paths throughout the city. It was very efficient in getting around the city.

The London’s largest Ferris wheel, called the London eye. Apparently it is like a half hour ride to go around the whole thing, and you get a great view of London on a nice sunny day. The London eye lights up the night sky as it reflected beautifully in the the Thames River.

Well as you would expect UK weather was no different than Irish weather, sunny skies appeared by chance, and once when I took the tube, it was sunny when I entered the underground, but once I got out, it was pouring rain.

Along with seeing all the major attractions around the city, Big Ben, Westminster Abby, the British Museum, Buckingham Palace

The Queen wasn’t in when I visited. I heard that to determine if the Queen was home or not, she would usually fly her own custom flag above Buckingham Palace. If she was out, then the Union Jack Flag will be flown instead. But every few hours or so, there is a changing of the royal guards parade, where the Queen’s royal guards (the guys in red and bear skin hats that don’t move) actually move and change shifts. It’s an elaborate parade, and tradition, and hundreds of people will wait out the palace a few hours ahead of time to get a good view of the parade. I took a video of the march of the guards away from the palace. Below:

Also near the Palace, at the Hyde park corner, there’s a crosswalk for people, the crossing the street light signal, but there’s one for horse crossing too! I thought it was so amusing. They even have the crossing button be elevated for those people on horse back to press the crossing button. Unfortunately I didn’t take a good photo of it, but here’s a photo off Google:

Here are some more photos around the city:

After spending a day’s worth at Britain’s huge museum, we decided to take a trip to Oxford to visit the college campus (being the Harry Potter geek I am). Here are a few photos from Oxford: