Advertisement
A Colourful Tusker
This elephant was the first one we saw, near the Royal Albert Hall.Sunday 16 May
Hi Everyone. Today we discovered all your messages! I had thought that we would find them at the end of each entry (as you can do), but, for us, they all go into a special Messages file, which we have just found! Here we can read them and then either accept or reject them. This allows us to delete any rubbish sent by unknown persons (have received one so far). Once we accept them, they are published at the end of the blog entry that they were sent to us from, and this is where you will now be able to see them.
Thank you all very much for the messages that you have sent so far. It is great to get news from the home front, and to know that you are taking an interest in our adventures. In particular:
Pam: your 4 messages make you the leading publisher of messages so far! We saw the Crusader highlights last night. No haddock so far, but Tracey cooked us lovely salmon steaks last night.
Sherrie: Definitely English breakfast.
Tony & Norma: good to hear that the photos are getting through on dial-up. We are
Can I Take Him Home Please?
A poster for Sir Cliff's concert in October. reducing them from about 3 MB to only 80 kB.
Jean & Jack: Please to hear that we have brought London back to life for you. Also glad to hear that our ghosts are still haunting Northlands Mall. Is Malcolm managing all that extra water wiping up without his helper.
Today we ventured into the city centre with David. Sundays are good days to go by bus. From the top deck of a London double decker bus you get a great view and, if you can sit in the front row, you get more than just the view. With the bottom of the front of the bus quite a bit below you, judging how close the bottom of the front is from any obstacle is very deceptive, and you constantly have this feeling that the bus is going to hit everything in front of it! One has to marvel at the skill of the drivers as they constantly squeeze through narrow gaps, around tight corners and roundabouts, etc. Getting out at Hyde Park, outside the Royal Albert Hall, we came across the first of many colourfully painted elephants. 250 of these have been painted by different artists and
The Queen Mum
Queen Elizabeth 1900-2002 and King George VI 1895-2002 celebrities and placed around the city. They are part of a conservation campaign to make people aware of the plight of Indian elephants as endagered animals. We found about 30 to 40 of them. Karen in particular loved them all and will have enough photos of them to fill several pages!
From the Royal Albert Hall we walked through Knightsbridge (one of London's upmarket areas and the site of Harrods) to Green Park, where we found a lot more elephants. And had a picnic lunch. We then looked for the new statue of the Queen Mother, erected in 2009. We found it in the Mall, near her home Clarence House (now Charles' house), and not far from Buckingham Palace. The statue, which captures her at age 51, is well done. Alongside it are two long bronze friezes that depict aspects of her life.
We next walked on to Trafalgar Square to see the new statue of Sir Keith Park, the Kiwi who led the group of fighter aircraft that won the Battle of Britain. Unfortunately he was absent! The statue had been erected only temporarily on an unused plinth in Trafalgar Square before being moved elsewhere. The
Where's Sir Keith?
An empty plinth in Trafalgar Square plinth will soon have an artwork erected on it from the National Gallery, which fills one side of Trafalgar Square.
A short walk from Trafalgar Square took us to Piccadily Circus. On the way we met a group of Metropolitan Police doing some community work, warning people to guard their property well from pick-pockets etc. From Picadilly Circus we caught the tube home, making it just before rain set in.
Our trip to Greece and Turkey is looking very shaky at present. Some British Airways staff are deciding tomorrow whether to go on strike. If they do, the dates will include the day that we are supposed to be flying to Athens. Watch this space.
P&K
Advertisement
Tot: 0.057s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 9; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0306s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Pam
non-member comment
elephants
Hi Great pics, love the colourful elephant. Misery guts weather here, cold and wet, but I guess we need the rain. Hope the cabin staff keep working would hate for you to miss your cruise. Have you booked your flite in Oct Karen to London to go and see Cliff. Fingers crossed no strike, no dust. Love Pam