London - Wanderings
Coming to you in this installment - my thoughts on London as I wandered through a Monopoly board of streets, camera in hand, photographing anything that took my fancy. Well, not quite anything, but some stuff anyway.
Photos for this section can be seen at this place
I set off to wander the streets of London, no real destination in mind, just to pound the pavement a little, see what I could see. I navigated the tube successfully to Oxford St, simply because I recognised it from the Monopoly board, and my first thought when stepping out of the station was "Oxford St? I'll buy it!" Having made the seriously unfunny joke that I imagine every single English-speaking tourist makes, I felt I could continue.
Walking down Oxford Street, turning onto Regent St ("I'll buy it!"), I marvelled at the shear beauty of the architecture around me, the attention to detail, the feeling of age. It really drove home that I was wandering around a place that REALLY had history. Just wandering the streets, there were constant reminders of the Napoleonic wars (though not as described by Tolstoy), and how much it had meant to win them; similarly the World Wars, and countless other battles, and wars, some of which I'd never even heard of (thanks social studies - I did the same Maori history half a dozen times, yet my knowledge of European history comes from Hornblower!)
I'm not sure exactly when, but I passed through the parade of the horse guards, which was cool. Seeing all of the guards with very serious expressions on their faces while Japanese tourists stood next to them to get their photos taken was kind of funny, but I refrained from snapping a few pictures myself - I kind of felt sorry for them. Looking out to the right of the parade, I saw the old admiralty buildings, which I'm sure were mentioned numerous times in Hornblower. That was pretty cool to see too. From there I wandered past Downing St, past serious looking men with serious looking rifles. Decided against pulling any funny business, can't think why...
After a few false turns ("Park Lane? I'll buy it!") I eventually made it to Trafalgar Square ("I'll buy it!" - yet another reminder of what beating Napoleon mean). Looking at Nelson on top of his column was cool; I hope that he wasn't prone to vertigo, that column is bloody tall! I noticed that the statue is of Nelson in his later days - you can see that one of his sleeves is empty. Tough job, admiral. You can keep it, if I can keep my limbs!
So after that, I wandered river-wards, more to see the Thames than any of the buildings on either side, but it being my lucky day, my route to water lead me straight to Westminster abbey, a confection of architecture, gorgeous, over-elaborate, and seeming more a symbol of vast wealth and unattainable status than a church. Still, nice to look at. I got some pretty pictures. Next to that, somewhat tucked away and paled by comparison, I found the remains of the Jewel Tower, a part of Westminster Palace which survived the great fire. It was built in 1365, and was used by King Edward the 3rd to store his treasures in. Interesting, no droves of people - strike one for the wandering around method of seeing a city!
Having got my fill of these sights, I meandered (a word that derives from the name of a river which I was to see a week later on the other side of Europe) my way across Lambeth bridge (I think) and got to the other side of the Thames. The Thames is filthy, but it looks deep, and looking down it, you can see many famous buildings abutting the water's edge...
On the other side of the Thames, I made what was, for me at least, the most fascinating discovery I'd made. I wandered into an old-looking churchyard, because it looked old, and was surrounded by graves which had had their inscriptions worn to near illegibility, and had a look around. The sign at the gate had said that it was now a museum of gardening history, so I wandered into the building itself to ask about the history of the church. Inside, I found out that the church had been standing on the site (in various incarnations) since before the conquest. After having been given a fairly thorough run down of the history of the building itself (which had been associated with the Black Prince), which was the site of the graves of two famous world traveling plant hunters, a father and son pair both named John Tradescant, and also of Captain William Bligh of "Mutiny on the Bounty" fame, I got directed to head down a side-street and have a look at what remains of the Lambeth Royal Daulton factory (the lady behind the desk was quite passionate about two areas - local history, and porcelain china). Odd though this was, I thought I'd spare a few minutes and wander down to have a look. It turned out to be fascinating. I'm not sure how well the pictures turned out (I'll have a look in a minute), but if you look at the fine detail and then imagine the whole building being covered with that... I picked up two interesting facts there - 1) Royal Daulton made the bulk of their money in the manufacture of sewerage pipes, not porcelain china, and 2) the outside of the factory was deliberately made over-elaborate as it was basically a showcase for the work that they could do.
Having been fascinated out for the day, I made my way to Waterloo station to catch the tube back to the flat.
Photos for this section can be seen at this place
I set off to wander the streets of London, no real destination in mind, just to pound the pavement a little, see what I could see. I navigated the tube successfully to Oxford St, simply because I recognised it from the Monopoly board, and my first thought when stepping out of the station was "Oxford St? I'll buy it!" Having made the seriously unfunny joke that I imagine every single English-speaking tourist makes, I felt I could continue.
Walking down Oxford Street, turning onto Regent St ("I'll buy it!"), I marvelled at the shear beauty of the architecture around me, the attention to detail, the feeling of age. It really drove home that I was wandering around a place that REALLY had history. Just wandering the streets, there were constant reminders of the Napoleonic wars (though not as described by Tolstoy), and how much it had meant to win them; similarly the World Wars, and countless other battles, and wars, some of which I'd never even heard of (thanks social studies - I did the same Maori history half a dozen times, yet my knowledge of European history comes from Hornblower!)
I'm not sure exactly when, but I passed through the parade of the horse guards, which was cool. Seeing all of the guards with very serious expressions on their faces while Japanese tourists stood next to them to get their photos taken was kind of funny, but I refrained from snapping a few pictures myself - I kind of felt sorry for them. Looking out to the right of the parade, I saw the old admiralty buildings, which I'm sure were mentioned numerous times in Hornblower. That was pretty cool to see too. From there I wandered past Downing St, past serious looking men with serious looking rifles. Decided against pulling any funny business, can't think why...
After a few false turns ("Park Lane? I'll buy it!") I eventually made it to Trafalgar Square ("I'll buy it!" - yet another reminder of what beating Napoleon mean). Looking at Nelson on top of his column was cool; I hope that he wasn't prone to vertigo, that column is bloody tall! I noticed that the statue is of Nelson in his later days - you can see that one of his sleeves is empty. Tough job, admiral. You can keep it, if I can keep my limbs!
So after that, I wandered river-wards, more to see the Thames than any of the buildings on either side, but it being my lucky day, my route to water lead me straight to Westminster abbey, a confection of architecture, gorgeous, over-elaborate, and seeming more a symbol of vast wealth and unattainable status than a church. Still, nice to look at. I got some pretty pictures. Next to that, somewhat tucked away and paled by comparison, I found the remains of the Jewel Tower, a part of Westminster Palace which survived the great fire. It was built in 1365, and was used by King Edward the 3rd to store his treasures in. Interesting, no droves of people - strike one for the wandering around method of seeing a city!
Having got my fill of these sights, I meandered (a word that derives from the name of a river which I was to see a week later on the other side of Europe) my way across Lambeth bridge (I think) and got to the other side of the Thames. The Thames is filthy, but it looks deep, and looking down it, you can see many famous buildings abutting the water's edge...
On the other side of the Thames, I made what was, for me at least, the most fascinating discovery I'd made. I wandered into an old-looking churchyard, because it looked old, and was surrounded by graves which had had their inscriptions worn to near illegibility, and had a look around. The sign at the gate had said that it was now a museum of gardening history, so I wandered into the building itself to ask about the history of the church. Inside, I found out that the church had been standing on the site (in various incarnations) since before the conquest. After having been given a fairly thorough run down of the history of the building itself (which had been associated with the Black Prince), which was the site of the graves of two famous world traveling plant hunters, a father and son pair both named John Tradescant, and also of Captain William Bligh of "Mutiny on the Bounty" fame, I got directed to head down a side-street and have a look at what remains of the Lambeth Royal Daulton factory (the lady behind the desk was quite passionate about two areas - local history, and porcelain china). Odd though this was, I thought I'd spare a few minutes and wander down to have a look. It turned out to be fascinating. I'm not sure how well the pictures turned out (I'll have a look in a minute), but if you look at the fine detail and then imagine the whole building being covered with that... I picked up two interesting facts there - 1) Royal Daulton made the bulk of their money in the manufacture of sewerage pipes, not porcelain china, and 2) the outside of the factory was deliberately made over-elaborate as it was basically a showcase for the work that they could do.
Having been fascinated out for the day, I made my way to Waterloo station to catch the tube back to the flat.
posted by Not My Former at 9:16 AM
1 Comments:
You know maybe I shouldn't be saying this but there might be such a thing as TOO many blogs. J/k good to see you having a good time, smart move on buying Trafalgar, the red set is best one.
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