The weekend of Nov 11 I had a host of visitors =) GYC and Crazy J came from San Jose on Thursday night, and RY arrived on Friday morning. Surprizingly, four people in my corporate appartment wasn't that bad, though the unit is fairly large for London standards (505sq feet, approx). [FYI, my appartment actually looks like that -- at least it did before I moved in and made a mess...]
Thursday night dinner was Chinatown (yum!), followed by a walk around the neighborhood including Picadilly Circus (no clowns or balloons, sorry!), and Trafalgar square. Crazy J wasn't feeling the best, so we went home.
Thursday night at home was hilarous. GYC and Crazy J were on the last leg of their Europe trip, dead tired and thinking of sleep. Guess what we did? Three laptops, one facing each wall, all on internet. HAHAHA. Geeks such as us =D They managed to scam free wireless from somewhere, but had to sit in strange places to secure the most stable connection. I didn't take a pic, but it really did crack me up when I looked up and realized how silly we looked =D
RY arrived on Friday morning. They did tourist stuff while I was at work, then I met them at a pub for dinner. Poor Crazy J was still recovering from stomach probs in Morocco, so he stayed at home. SOO stupid, apparently last call for the kitchen on a Friday night is 8:30pm. The bar part is open until 11pm at least, but if you wanted any sort of food, including light appetizers, gotta order by 8:30pm. ARGH.
Saturday, the three of us (no J) took a bus tour. First stop - Salisbury.
In Salisbury, there's a cathedral that boasts the tallest steeple in England (I think that's what the guide said).
It's so tall the stone columns are actually bent (see photo below, though you can tell in the photo above that the steeple tilts to the side). The top of the steeple has a little room in which a garment from Mary Magdelene is kept as a relic. Our tour guide has actually climbed up there to see it (he's into rock climbing, and no there aren't any internal stairs).
Church interior:
Bent stone columns:
I couldn't resist, reminiscent of RY with Woody Woodchuck at Universal Studios in LA (see Chickvegas):
We also headed into the town area, which was pretty neat and historic, with an old city wall:
Next stop - Stonehenge
It was FREEZING out in the middle of no where, with no trees around:
Haha, a picture of G taking a picture of me taking picture of him, from across the open plain:
The little black speck on the right between the rocks - that's G:
Me laughing so much that I messed up the composition of this photo. He needs a haircut... or a hairtie hahahah =D
Then we headed to the city of Bath.
Roman Baths:
Bath Abbey - notice the Rememberance Day memorial in the foreground:
Ceilings are made from carved stone:
Open square outside the Roman Baths and the Bath Abbey:
And then the long bus ride home...
Traffic - the normal scene of London streets
Sunday morning, the boys flew out =( RY and I slept in until about 2pm HAHAHAH =D When we finally were ready to leave the house, we decided to take the River Cruise boat to Greenwich. One of the popular tourist attractions in Greenwich is the boat Cutty Sark. Talk about missing the boat - the exhibit closed the week prior, and won't open again for another two years!!
Because we got up so late, we didn't have time to go the Prime Meridian, or the Royal Observatory, else we'd have missed the OTHER boat -- being the last one back down the Thames. From Greenwich to Tower Bridge there isn't much to see other than Canary Wharf, but even that just looks like a sparce city skyline. But from Tower Bridge to Westminster, the river is lit up and pretty:
Tower Bridge
Tower of London [north bank]
City Hall (the egg thing on the left) and the EY More London office (the last two greenish buildings on the right) [south bank]
Hays Galleria [S]
London Bridge Hospital (and I can't remember what's the building on the left) [S]
HMS Belfast (on the left) and London Bridge (the red line) [S]
Southwark Cathedral, close to Borough Market [S]
The Wedding Cake church (way in the distance), and Blackfriars Bridge [N]
This is referred to as the wedding cake church because a long long time ago, a couple asked their baker to make a cake to celebrate their wedding that looked like their church. This was the church they got married in, and from then on, cakes for weddings were made to look like this church.
St Paul's, and Blackfriars Bridge [N]
OXO building [S]
Can't remember what this is [N]
Can't remember anything about this! [?]
Millenium Bridge with London Eye behind [S]
Government buildings, close to Downing Street [N]
London Eye in patriotic colours of red and blue (the blue dots are the little pods that go around the ferris wheel) [S]
Houses of Parliament and Big Ben [N]
London Eye and the building next door (where you go to buy tickets, actually...) [S]
The last stop was Westminster, so we walked over to see Big Ben.
Then we wandered to nearby Westminster Abbey. The Remembrance Day memorials there were beautiful and poignant.
It's so good to hang out with old friends =D
2 comments:
WOW. I totally forgot it was Remembrance Day a while back... absolutely no reminder for me until I looked at your pictures just now! Such a different environment...
Gabe needs a haircut.
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