London Day 2

After a night's sleep in bed that was just about 4 inches too short, I met up with Andrew as his"flat".

We walked to Hyde Park, similar to Central Park but about 3 times as big.


It had these pretty cool sunken gardens peppered thought out, and the weather has been exceptionally nice here, so everything was in full bloom.


We walked past the Princess Diana memorial in the middle of the park. It is a stone circle waterway. It is elegant, but morbid at the same time.



Hyde back's up into Buckingham Palace. My first impression of it was a little underwhelmed. It was cool to see something up close and personal that I have only seen in movies and on TV.



Right in front of the palace is the British World War I Memorial. A huge stone arch with a classic man riding Pegasus'. It was massive.


A little walk down from there is the Department of War and accompanied by the Dept of the Army and the Navy, similar to the Pentagon. More Greek-like massive buildings.


On our way out to the other side, we stumble upon a Royal Guard standing at attention, his job is to stand there and keep a straight face while dumb tourists like me take cheesy pictures with him. After the photo-op, I realized that the guard was at most my age, a humbling realization.


Next up was the British National Gallery. This place was amazing. I came with in arms reach of Picaso's, Monney's, Da Vinci's and Rafelels. A very, very surreal experience.


With in a spitting distance from the steps of the Gallery was the famous Big Ben. Again, que cheesy tourist photo-op.


Our next stop was the British Museum, don't let the name fool you. On the way there we past the Cathedral, the church where Royalty are baptized, married and buried.


From the out side the British Museum does not look like much. A larger Greek styled building. But looks can be deceiving.


You walk in and the whole thing opens up into this huge atrium, massive, large. Natural light floods this room the size of 2 plane hangers.


Andrew motioned me over to the Egypt room... And there it was. The Rosetta Stone. I was totally getting my Indiana Jones on.


Everything I saw out did anything before it: Egyptian tombs, 20 foot statues, Greek stone carvings,Spartan war gear, and a replica of Parthenon.




I'll upload more pics later.


Seeing this examples of human creativity and ingenuity was awe striking. It also made me have a better aprecation of the concept of time. I saw things that were literally 2500 years old. Things I have only seen and read about in history books.

Pretty kick as day in Golly Ol' London. Next up Barcelona.