In our years living in London, we never prioritized a visit to the British seat of government, the Westminster Palace. Of the various reasons for shunning it in the past, none stand up to scrutiny, so I’ll refrain from offering an explanation. It is part of a World Heritage site…
I finished my old Tower of London entry with a statement of intent to build a better portfolio of it on future visits. Quite a few years came and went by before I had a chance to do that. On the recent trip to London, the Tower was near the…
My standard photographic walkabout usually results in hundreds of pictures of practically anything that catches my eye. I eventually throw away around three-quarters of those “negatives” – and use only a portion of the remainder for retrospectives in this space – but my default stance is “shoot first”. That is…
This is not an exceptional photo but it occupies a special place in my memory. It was opportunistically taken from the upper deck of a bus idling by the Mansion House, looking towards the Royal Exchange. So very iconic British red double-decker is moving across the line of vision. In…
This is one of my favorite photos of London. Old-timers on this blog may remember it making an appearance twice already, processed in rather different fashion back then. Although it is not objectively a postcard-quality shot, it comes close enough. We are standing in front of Tate Modern on…
The Rotal Botanic Gardens in London are recognized on UNESCO World Heritage List for their place in development of both garden art and botanical science. In our years of living in London, we only visited the place once and – as my Travelog entry attests – came away sufficiently impressed.…
My very first visit to London, nearly 15 years ago, happened sometime before we started travelling extensively abroad, which explains London’s sites’ relatively early sequential numbers on my World Heritage roster. On that week-long business trip I ended up with sufficient spare time to check out main attractions of the…
The Tower of London, dating from William’s Conquest in 1066, is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list for a number of reasons, among them as an outstanding example of medieval military architecture as well as for its role in the European history. It is certainly one of the must-see…
When you lived in a given city for several years but you always approached it as a kind of “tourist”, targeting specific points of interest, never failing to admire the scenery, and practically never walking down its streets without a camera in hand, you end up with much more than…
I am not very much inspired to write anything at the moment, so instead I am picking an item from my little backlog of random illustrations. This is not a particularly good picture, but I sort of like the feel of it. It was taken with my little pocketcam in…
This is one of the most-fashionable streets in St John’s Wood in Northwest London. I took a few pictures of it with my pocket-cam when we were last in the area, and then managed to stitch a couple of them in a serviceable wide-angle picture. And this is…
Continuing our walk along the Thames Path (which we started here), we can more closely see the fine buildings at the Blackfriars Bridge end of the Victoria Embankment on the north side of the river. The red one on the left is the “new” Sion College building (dating to 1886),…
The Thames Path along Southbank, from the London Eye (seen in the previous installment) to the London Bridge, is one of my favorite walking routes in Central London. At intervals, it gets very congested with tourists and other gawkers, but it is mostly tolerable. The views, though, are great. Here…
Westminster Bridge is always chock-full of tourists and you often need to step into the roadway to cross it. However, it offers brilliant views over the Thames, so after walking past the Big Ben, we made the requisite effort. Here is what the river looks like. And here…
Continuing with our walk around London sights (previous entry is here), we come to the Parliament Square. Despite the fact that it is one of the busiest traffic circles in central London, the actual square in the middle – obscured by the bus in the picture, unfortunately, – is a…
We have seen dozens of royal palaces around Europe, and the Buckingham Palace in London is one of the outwardly dullest of them, grey, blocky, and all. (The interior is quite impressive, though, if you ever manage to visit it during the two months in the summer that the palace…
Walking along The Mall (which we entered via Admiralty Arch) towards the Buckingham Palace, we leave the lovely St James Park on our left. Even in February, on a warm day, you’ll find people basking in the sun here. Imagine what it looks like on a balmy summer weekend (yes,…
One of the streets converging on Trafalgar Square (the previous entry in the series) is The Mall, which runs straight to the Queen Victoria Memorial and the Buckingham Palace. Access to The Mall from the square is through Admiralty Arch. Its name symbolizes solely the fact that it adjoins the…
On to more famous sights now (the previous entry in the series is here). Trafalgar Square, in my view, is the center of London, where every first-time visitor to the city eventually finds himself – and, potentially, lingers for a while. It can be insufferable during staged public events and…
The next installment of our virtual walk around London (the previous post in the series is here) has just one picture, of the corner of New Row and St Martin’s Lane in the West End Theater district. Seemingly nothing special here, but I find these kinds of streets irresistible. …