Blogs from St. James, Greater London, England, United Kingdom, Europe

We did a part of Royal Parks Walks on 2 May – starting from Camden Town station, we went through Regent Park, Regent Canal via Little Venice and Kensington Gardens. On 3 June, we started from Lancaster Gate and walked through Kensington Gardens and strolled through Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Walk. There were a lot of colourful, scented roses and flowers blooming on the beds, arches and obelisks and canes - they looked very beautiful and offered therapeutic atmosphere with lovely garden ornaments. Afterwards, we crossed over the busy roads and passed through Duke of Wellington Memorial Arch and entered Green Park. As expected, a part of green Park was closed; we had to take an alternate route to reach Westminster. Mark had brought a little A-Z guide. After leaving Green Park, we walked down ... read more

Mark was interested in Man Ray’s exhibition at National Portrait Gallery, which would finish on 27 May 2013. We decided to go to the special exhibition. As usual, he treated me to the exhibition. There were more than 150 monochrome cine photographs of famous artists and writers of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, e.g. Picasso (painter), Lee Miller (photographer), Max Ernst (surrealist artist), Virginia Woolf (writer), Le Courbusier (architect), etc, displayed in the exhibition rooms. All of the photos were processed by Man Ray and many of the people, e.g. Henri Mattise (painter), Leger (painter), Le Courbusier (architect) were associated with the Goldfinger’s family and 2 Willow Road. Despite the final day of the special exhibition, there were loads of people in the exhibition rooms. Afterwards, we continued looking round the permanent galleries of historical celebrities, ... read more

My parents-in-law, John & Mary Goddard offered us comfortable and relaxing Christmas holiday at their 10 star class country house in the heart of Suffolk. Like many of places in Britain, it was mostly raining over the Christmas period. We managed to do a bit of the village walk, strolling around Lavenham, one of the most attractive villages in Suffolk, during the damp Christmas. I spent a lot of time reading even till the midnight, and finished reading Hilary Mantel’s “Bring up the bodies” and Alexandre Dumas’ “The man in the iron mask”, both of which I started around my birthday. When I came back to work at Oxfam, I realised that it wasn’t only myself who was hooked on reading during the wet Christmas. There were massive volumes of fiction books ... read more

the one and only ABBEY ROAD!!! an interesting trip in finding it as me and Hector and Alin automatically assumed that Abbey road was located at the tube station named Abbey Road!! well... after a 30 minute trek. three changes on the tube. We got to Abbey road and asked a nice passerby the way to the famous Beatles crossing and got the response " you are in East London.... the crossing is in Central London' you can imagine our response as we live in central london.. FUCK! sooooo back on the tube, alin decided to call it quits. and me and hector ventured back to central london and finally made it after a few wrong turns! and it was AMAZING. i do very much feel sorry for the people who actually live near there and ... read more

Once again I have been flaky about posting. Sorry everyone. So I still haven't told you about all my adventures during Fall Break. So we had 10 days off of school and I decided to go to Paris and London. In Paris I stayed the first three nights with Liv and her finance, Raphael. It was so delightful. I hadn't seen her in three years and it was nice to have them help suggest adventures to have. On Saturday I walked to Parc Buttes Chaumont which is a large park tucked away. I walked along a river and then climbed up a hill where there was a temple at the top. There was a great view and it was surreal to be in such a gorgeous park, in a temple, in Paris. Then I ventured off ... read more