Standard London photos

Thanks for the emails, everyone. It's good to hear from home. I may be jumping the gun, but I'm picturing a Christchurch with newborn lambs frolicking, daffodils blooming, and Hagley Park buried in cherry blossom. London is kind of the same, only with rain, and beggars instead of lambs. And they don't so much "frolic" as "hunch".

The last few days, I've been doing some touristy stuff. Here are the pictures to prove it:

The tower containing Big Ben


London Eye/London cab


Man feeding squirrels in St James Park


A statue on the Queen Victoria Monument


Westminster Abbey

One of the few fragments of the old city wall, at Aldgate (by the Tower)

Buckingham Palace and Victoria Monument from St James Park

Okay, here's a building that's pretty cool - 30 St Mary's Ax (but known locally as "the Gherkin"). I think it's the council offices. It was built in 2002-2003 and is all eco-friendly. Normally the public can't get inside, but in 2 weeks there will be a weekend where great architecture and stately houses all across London are open to the public to raise money for charity, and I am SO going to do a tour then:

30 St Mary's Ax

You might know this one - I saw it on the news before I left home. I thought it was at the Tait Modern, but I guess it's at the Tait Britain. That's where I spent the afternoon today. I went to the Francis Bacon exhibition, which was expensive but really comprehensive. Anyway, there are marathon runners sprinting along the corridors at the gallery. It's fun, and it gave some people a heck of a fright when they didn't know it was happening:

Marathon runners at the Tait Britain