London

Hi all

I first want to thank everyone for their birthday wishes, it was really nice to open my email and see birthday wishes from my family.  As I am sure that you have figured out I have managed to get to Amsterdam more or less in one piece.  The flights were no problem and I was delighted to find that I was able to spend almost an entire day in London before having to head off to Amsterdam.  I must say that London is a lovely place and I am certainly intending on returning.

I was really fortunate as the main bus station that I cam into was in the city of Westminster (this is where there are a lot of important buildings and places)

I am sorry that the pic is on it's side but I forgot to rotate it before putting it on the blog.  Anyways I am pretty sure that this church has some historical significance however I was unable to figure out which church I was looking at and I liked the way it looked so I decided to take a picture.

This is just a pub that I came across I liked that it was called The Shakespeare and even though I didn't go in for a pint (as they were fairly pricey I decided I still wanted the picture)

Buckingham Palace, as you can see the flag is not flying so that meant that the Queen was not in:  As a result I was unable to go and have tea and crumpets with her majesty but next time I am in London maybe I will have better luck.

I was a little disappointed to find out that there would be no changing of the guard while I was there (being that it was sunday and I guess this is the day when the guards get to be a little lazy) and while I didn't watch the guards for very long it is true that they didn't seem to move a muscle while there were standing guard.

This is why England is in a financial crisis these gates must have cost a small fortune to make and this is only one picture of one set of gates.

Picture of the Palace form the end of their crazy long driveway

I originally took a picture of this really cool fountain (that is water flowing down the front of the monument) and then I later found out that this was a memorial to Canadians for their sacrifices during the second world war.  I may be a little bias but I say that it was the nicest monument out of all the monuments in the area.

This was the Washington monument which was close to Buckingham Palace (but not as close as the Canadian Monument)

The entrance to Hyde Park (this is just a giant park in London where everyone seems to go on a nice summer sunday afternoon)

They had a beautiful rose garden here in Hyde park and this is my attempts at being a photographer.

Again I am sorry that the picture is on its side but this was a picture of the pluck (spelling ?) in front of the Princess Diana Memorial and below is a picture of the memorial

It was kind of difficult to take a picture of this memorial so you would understand what it looked like, basically it was like a water going over rocks and creating little rapids going down a hill and when it reached the bottom it would collect in a pool.  They encouraged people to play in the memorial as that is what Diana would have wanted (I am not going to lie I think we need more interactive memorials I am a fan)

Random swan, they are seriously all over the park (the park is situated around a man made lake which is full of people boating around on paddle and row boats).  It was funny as the birds are clearly very comfortable with human contact as they would walk right to you if they thought that you may have something to feed them.

I am not sure what this arch was called but I liked it and therefore needed to take a picture of it.

A picture of the london eye (it was very expensive to ride and by that point in time I had run out of battery life so I couldn't take any more pictures)

But before I ran out of batteries I was able to get a video of Trafalgar Square

As I say in the video it is difficult to explain unless you have actually experienced it.  It was really a sight to see.

Anyways this was London.  I am hoping to soon start amassing picture so of Amsterdam and to post those shortly because honestly Amsterdam is a beautiful city and there is so much to see and do I am not even sure where to start.

I am going to go for now but I love you all and I hope you have enjoyed your quick trip though London as seen by my camera.