Holiday Photos #30

Anyone got the time? Snort! I love this photo of William being William. But seriously, got time to browse through some photos? I don't think I need to tell you where we are, this first photo gives it away quite nicely. (I'm so glad they fixed this thing after the alien spaceship crashed through it.)



How many London icons* can you see in this one photo? I've listed six obvious ones at the bottom of this post. Can you guess them all? Can you see any I've missed?
More umbrellas. And oh yeah, that building in the background - Westminster Cathredral. We had to go back three times before we finally managed to arrive at a time when we were allowed to visit the inside of it.

Slightly down from the British Parliament Building (pronounced "Par-lee-ah-mint" according to Sam's sweetheart), is this statue of Abraham Lincoln. Whodathunk!

This is outside of the Templar Church - the one in the movie The Da Vinci Code, which is how we knew to visit it. I liked this photo I took right after an afternoon mass was ending, with the showy red cardinal standing by the door. I'm used to a sentence about a "showy red cardinal" meaning capturing a red bird in a snowy winter landscape.

I took quite a few photos inside the buildings in the Tower of London. Most of them are blurry. Here's a full set of armor for both horse and man - how did the horse carry all that weight!?

These firearms were displayed so gracefully.

More "gun art". This lion looks like he's had a few too many espressos. Or perhaps he's just a bit demonic.

Everyone loved this display of the King's armor and the Mini Me's armor.

Check out the cool lizard on top of Mini Me's armor. I know, this armor was really meant for a child - which is obviously odd or indulgent or something else completely untranslatable to our culture - but I couldn't help to think that any young male would LOVE the lizard. Or maybe it's a dragon. Either way - what boy child could resist!

More umbrellas. It's amazing everyone in London isn't walking around with eye patches from umbrella accidents.

One of my favorite photos of William, ever. This was taken not far from the Tower of London. Shortly after this photo was taken, the wind picked up the umbrella and carried it over into a private garden. We got it back. I can't remember how. No, seriously, I can't. Maybe William remembers.

Before we left on our trip William spent a lot of time trying to convince me that we had to go up on the London Eye - a ten story tall (or is it twenty story tall - in any case - it's TALL) ferris wheel. I don't do well with height, and ferris wheels in particular, so I insisted that under no circumstances would I be going on the Eye, although William was free to go without me. It turned out to be a slightly different set up than a regular ferris wheel and I did go with him and it was a lot of fun. We were actually a lot higher than it looks from this photo above - it was taken witha telephoto lens (through the glass cage that encased us), but I wanted to share this photo to show you the overview of Westminster Cathredral, to show you how it rambles forever.

This photo gives you a better idea of how high up we went. We're up above the Thames and for all the non-British who don't recognize it immediately the large building across the river in the ..er, foreground I guess we'll call it... is what Guy Fawkes wanted to KABOOM.

Speaking of kabooms, this was a peaceful peace rally right across the street from the Parliament Building protesting involvement in the Iraq war. I've never actually been to my own national capital, so I can't say for sure, but it seemed to me that it's unlikely that something like this would be so casually tolerated in Washington D.C. At least, under our most recent administration. And here we are almost two years later and still...... I wonder if the protest is still there? I'll have to check when we go back in a month.

I put all the photos of statues and artsy photos from this London set up at Laume's Studio. Be sure to hop on over and check those out as well.

* 1) man holding umbrella 2) red telephone booth 3) cars driving on the "wrong" side of the road 4) Westminster Cathedral 5) London Eye 6) peeking out from behind some shrubbery - Big Ben