Letters to friends

Today, for a bit of color, I thought I would share with you some photo from the back passage a few houses down from my place.

It runs through the middle of 16 blocks of houses, and allows for pedestrian (and dog) access from 1 side of Harringay to the other away from the hustle and bustle of the main thoroughfares. There are also about 3 schools directly adjacent to it, so presumably it offers a safe way for the kiddies to walk to school.

Harringay Passage

Back Alley

It also seems to be a popular place for people to take their dogs for “walks”. I can tell this because despite the availability of special containers every block, there are always dog “walks” all over the alley.

I don't think the dogs can read

People seem to be very worried about the squirrels getting into their yards, and will often put up extreme measures to keep them out.

Squirrels keep out!

No squirrels allowed

Londoners are very environmentally conscious, and every day you can find evidence of many fine individuals putting out furniture and household goods for impromptu recycling. Simply pick and choose from a cornucopia of delights, yours for the carrying off. (Blue leather couch not pictured)

Another man's treasure

Yesterday we went to Greenwich to have a look around.

First we checked out the view of the Thames

The river Thames

Then we walked under the Thames using the Greenwich Foot Tunnel.

Greenwich Foot Tunnel

Once we got accross, and arrived in Greenwich, we stopped for lunch at Marks & Spenser (a posh grocery shop). £10 for a sandwich, a pasta salad, 2 small juices, 2 small bags of crisps (potato chips) and Sarahs English favorite chocolate, which I originally thought were called Original Walnut Whips, but now I think they might be called Walnut Original Whips.

Walnut Original Whip

For site seeing,we first went to see the Prime Meridian at the Royal Observatory. I got a photo taken with one foot almost on the East side of the world, and another foot well into the West side, and a third foot hanging out of my backpack, also on the West side.

Jake the Peg and the (Optimus) Prime Meridian

We also had a look at an interesting museum in the old Royal Astronomers house about clocks + seagoing chronometers, and how the first few royal astronomers had to spend 20 or 30 years mapping the moon and its exact position relative to the stars every night to help ocean navigation. One poor guy worked on it for 10 years, but his observations were to sloppy, and they had to be discarded. Sarah and her friend Jade were bored silly by this part, but I found it quite interesting.

Then we went to Queens House (a Queen from a few hundred years ago), where we looked at some art, a spiral staircase without a central column (the first of its kind in England!), and Sarah stood between some columns for a photo

Sarah and Greenwich park

And to round out the day we had a look in at the National Maritime Museum. My favorite bit here was the Stained Glass from the Baltic Exchange, which was moved to the museum in 1992, after a bomb attack destroyed the Exchange. The Swiss-Re Gherkin is built on the site where the Baltic Exchange used to be.

For Valentines day, Sarah and I went for a walk to Alexandra Palace Park. It is a couple of km from our flat, so we were able to walk the whole way there without to much problem.

Alexandra Palace and Park

At the park we had a look at the deer, and fed the birds in the lake.

Political prisoners

Greedy Canadians

The palace has been used for a lot of different things, and is still used as an ice skating rink and for TV broadcasting.

Alexandra Palace

Now, on day 3, we have had some sort of grit put on the sidewalk, which looks like a cross between cooked mince, and the stuff you spend most of your time on the sidewalk trying not to step in.

Sidewalk with grit and snow

Our plane landed in London at 7:30am on Tuesday, Feb 3.

We got out of the airport and onto the tube at about 8:30am

We got off the tube at our station at about 10 am.

We got home stortly after that and slept until around 4pm.

London got a bit of snow, but the country as a whole, and people as individuals don’t know how to cope with it very well. In Canada the amount of snow that fell would have been a non event, but here because of the rarity, and lack of preparation / resources / knowledge, most of the country was apparently shut down for the day.

Our backyard, the day after the big snow

I see in the paper that 40% of the garbage that was supposed to be picked up since the start of the week hasn’t been yet, since the garbage trucks can’t go down many streets, since they are still too icy. Also, some garbage trucks have been taken off duty and are being used to lay down grit. Now rats and foxes are scavenging and starting to “cause problems”

No one on our street seems to have thought to clear the snow off the sidewalk, and so it all got trampled down and turned to ice. This makes walking up and down the street fun, since there is a hill on our street. We have been walking down the middle of the road, since that is clear, but usually have to move to the side a couple of times for cars to get past.

We went to see the Tower of London today.

Tower of London, seen from the River Thames, with a view of Traitor's Gate, by Viki Male

The best parts were the crown jewels and the ravens.

The crown jewels include the 2 biggest pieces of the largest rough diamond ever found, the Cullinan diamond, otherwise known as the Star of Africa. Before it was cut, it was 3106.75 carats (621 grams). After it was cut the largest diamond from it is still 530 carats (106 grams). That diamond is in a sceptre, and the next largest diamond is in a crown. the area directly in front of all the crowns and jewels is one of those hizontal escalators, so you can’t stand and gawk for too long. The day we were there there weren’t too many people, so we got a pretty good look.

They also had a huge gold wine bowl that could hold 144 bottles of wine, and had a ladle that was made out of a big conch shell on the end of a big gold rod. Pretty classy stuff.

Here is a photo gallery of some of the crown jewels, cleverly photographed in such a way as to remove all sense of scale.

A flock of about 8 or 10 ravens are kept on the tower grounds. They are kept with one wing quite severly clipped, so they can’t fly away. They are very intelligent birds, and a lot of fun to watch as they hop around the lawns, scavenging and sharpening their beaks.

One came up about 50 cm away from me and stood looking at me for a few minutes, but eventually left since I wasn’t giving him any food.

Tickets were £16 each, but Sarah got in for free as she is a member of the British historic places trust.

I’d say it was a fun afternoon out, but I don’t think I need to go back again.

We saw this cool glass sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It is 8.1m high, and weighs 1724kg. It was made by Dale Chihuly and his team in 2001 in Seattle. How do I know? I also took a photo of the informational plaque.

http://www.chihuly.com/

Sculpture by Dale Chihuly

It is hanging directly above the main information desk. I think I would be scared to work there, for fear of being crushed/impaled if the thing ever broke free.