Five Days in London! Day Two!!

My second day in London, I started out right away at Trafalgar Square as suggested by a friend. She had told me from Trafalgar onwards, there was always something to see, and she was right!

There will be a few obligatory photos of the red buses and telephone booth,  just to forewarn you all ;)

They were just so cool!!!

I found my way to St James's Park almost right away. It may be a strange comparison, but I saw London to be a lot like New York City!! Much bigger and with much more beautiful architecture, but still a bit like New York. The large city with its green parks settled right in the center, the underground, overground, the museums, the countless theatres with musicals always playing, it made me really miss New York, actually! Not to mention all the different types of birds in the parks!

This was about when I realized I must be in
a dream!

Out of all of the parks, I really think I loved St James's the most. It is one of the smaller parks, but even outlining it (called the Birdcage Walk) are these gorgeous buildings. I'm not sure if they are hotels, houses, apartments... but they're really beautiful, I couldn't get over them! I also saw swans at St James's for the first time... I don't know that I've ever been so close to those birds, I don't think I ever realized how big they were!

I also got to see the Horse Guards! So many horses there!! It made me want to go horse back riding again (Elizabeth, I'm talking to you!) The armor the guards wore was really neat too, I'm going to have to do some illustrations when I get home of these guys.

My first glimpse of Big Ben!!! Oh, I have to tell you all, I adore clock towers. Clocks in general. The city was filled with all these intricate clocks ad Big Ben was incredible. I think I stood at this corner and gawked for going on ten minutes, it was amazing! I knew it was intricate, but I suppose I never realized just how intricate!

I will spare you all all of my pictures of this clock tower, because trust me, there are a lot of them! I took well over two hundred pictures my second day there... Pretty sure half of them were of Big Ben and the other half were of birds.

(I'm sighing longingly over here to return to this clock tower...)

Anyway, moving on! My next stop was the House of Parliaments and Westminster Abbey!

I went to an Evensong service in the Abbey. I was really eager to see the inside of the cathedral, I've heard so many stories how gorgeous it is inside! The tours of the Abbey were ridiculously priced however. I found attending the services were free and thought it would be a good experience. Of course, I wasn't able to take photography there but it was a sweet little ceremony! (I was quite entertained much of the time as the kids in the choir looked incredibly bored with the service and took to (not so secretly) kicking each other under the pews. Oh the memories of being in church when you are a kid!)

The museum in London are legendary. I had to go to a few while I was there! I had a whole list of museums from friends to go see and I certainly didn't get to all of them. In fact, I only found the time to spend in two, and the first was the Tate Britain!

We could take pictures in the museums! I was shocked to see that we could! I am so used to the strictness of Italian museums, if you so much as have a phone out you are told to put it away ("No foto, per piacere!") and right in the Tate Britain, in front of the curators, visitors were taking photographs. Everyone was very respectful of their photographing and even their speaking voices, it was a very warm feeling museum!

I lied, here's another picture of Big Ben.

I also had a good view of the Eye of London! I was a bit tempted to try going on it, but here again the prices were a bit out of my spending range. It was really cool to see it anyhow though! (When I'm rich and famous I'll be back here ;D )

Woops here's another!

Perhaps another reason it reminded me of New York, London had many memorials throughout the city. Beautifully sculpted memorials of wars, battles, soldiers, and scattered in and out of the buildings and parks. They were amazing and really powerful to see.

I wanted to go to Waterloo as well! There wasn't a whole lot there and I'm not quite sure what I was expecting (other than that my favorite level in a videogame is based on ancient Waterloo and I felt it necessary to see it for myself!) The station though, was one of the more intricate stations in Lodon, I thought!

I was lucky to have gone though! A little east of Waterloo there happened to be a neighborhood festival that I got to see!! It was a lot of fun! Rides set up for kids, plenty of beer and wine stands, food stalls, puppet shows, even live performances. It felt like a miniature fair! It was a really fun way to end the day!!

Another photo of the Eye of London to end this post!