London - Part 1

This was my first visit to London and due to it's relative brevity, it certainly did not do the city it's true justice.

Every turn of the London street corner opened up new sights, new historic locations, places both new and yet of so familiar...All the place names and street corners, culled out of study, history and literature, stacked up in my mind's eye, one after the other until the unexpected and unique became just another passing point of interest.

Nelson, Wellington, Shakespeare, Dickens, Darwin, Gladstone, Palmerston, Churchill, Chaucer, Donne, Holmes & Doyle. It was an overwhelming flow of familiar names and places that, until now, for me, were just words on a page - Newgate, Aldgate, Cheapside, Southwark, Bankside, Poultry Lane, Snow Hill, Billingsgate, Ludgate, Fleet...the list was endless.

So if I sound astonished and at a bit of a loss, this is why. All these familiar names are now new to me, their cadence for me has shifted.  London, like New York, is one of those cities that actually exist at that crossroads between the practical, pedestrian everyday real-world, and the imaginary landscape of history and literature. I couldn't pass King Cross Station on the tube without thinking about Hogwarts. Baker Street will forever be home to a certain eminent practical detective just as every tribute to Nelson sent echoes of Hornblower through my memory. Don't get me started on Flashman...

I know it's a city to the people that call it home, but for me, it was that and much more.

As before, here's a short selection of photos from my visit that utterly fail to do it justice.

My sister-in-law Sharon, chilling in the cab

Not actually a TARDIS, I've discovered.

Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey

Silent Big Ben or "Quiet" Ben, as it now should be called

Sherlock Holmes Pub...solely because I like Sherlock Holmes

The Tube

St Pauls, looming, as it does.

Crossing the Millennium Bridge

"may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques that did affright the air at Agincourt ..."

I'm reliably told, this was the actual location of the Bear Gardens. Now a Pizza Express. Drink in the historical ambiance...

Southwark Cathedral

Southwark Cathedral

Waiting for Much Ado About Nothing...

Hanging with the groundlings at the Globe

The Thames, Tower Bridge & HMS Belfast

The Thames at sunset

On a Ghostwalk, heading to the plague pits of St, Botolph 

At the Horse Guards

Lions of Trafalger

Stonework & statuary

St. Pauls

Sneaking a photo of the dome of St. Pauls

Looking down to the floor from the top of St. Paul's dome

A grand view

Looking SW. I kept calling it the Shart rather than the Shard...

Rapacious pigeons of St. Pauls

Grand, imposing, spectacular

Nelson's backside and the moon, Trafalgar Square

One of the many shots of my feet I managed to take by accident.

Ale, for the end of a long day of walking.