Peter Pan Syndrome

That it does! Bye bye London

Kensington Gardens

Today we took a leisurely stroll through Kensington Gardens. We started off at Princess Diana Memorial Playground and then walked through the park taking pictures. We finally ended up at the Peter Pan statue. We saw a lot of dogs and pretty park landscapes.

I know its kind of creepy to take pictures of strangers' children but today I couldn't help it. These kids were so cute and had a tiny British accents to boot.

This girl was very into jumping in puddles and she knows how to dress for the occasion. Her mother had to physically restrain her from throwing herself into the fountain nearby.

This kid helped me to get the coveted pigeon actions shots I love. Thanks for being hyperactive and kind of mean to animals anonymous kid!

Later, I split off from the group to do a little shopping by myself. It’s so fun to walk around London. I popped into Harrod’s and Harvey Nichols to have a look around. As I mentioned before, there are very large sales going on. Everything at these stores was on sale which was great but they were stocked with designer labels. Even at 70% off things were still well over 200 GBP for a shirt. Oh well, off to H&M where I fit in. Lovely.

After I was finished shopping, I jumped on the tube and met an interesting Iranian man who offered to show me around the city. As much as I love hanging out with strange old men I declined. He was very nice though. We talked about San Francisco for a while then I got off the tube at Leicester Square. I did a little more shopping determined to spend the last of my pounds. I couldn’t find anything!!! I picked up lunch at Pret a Manger (delish!) and decided to stop in one more little boutique to have a look around. I found a great shirt! Yeah!

Today is our last day in London so I have some packing to do. I finally decided to ship the some stuff home. I packed up everything and headed to the post office. It’s amazing how daunting things are when you have no idea how a country works. You kind of just hand them your stuff and hope they know what to do with it. Come to think of it though, the post office in the states is kind of a mystery, too. Anyway, they were very nice and I managed to get a whole lot of stuff off my hands for a reasonable fee. Heads up everyone at home, two packages marked “Royal Mail” should be showing up at my house in around a week. Yeah!

Tonight we are going to have “goodbye London” pints at the wonderful Marlborough Arms. I’m very sad to leave London. Everyone is. If Paris is half as wonderful as London has been I will be a happy girl. I already am a happy girl.

Tomorrow I conquer the British Library and the Eurostar to Paris. Eiffel Tower here I come!

Walkin' the Walk

Today we headed out to lovely Regent's Park to have a look around and take some pictures of flowers for today's photo assignment. The park had plenty of flowers to choose from so all 18 of us ran around for a while snapping photos of everything in sight.

This rose is totally name after me. Don't I look lovely in my oh-so-flattering poncho?

I wanted to get an action shot of some pigeons flying so I kept chasing flocks of them around to get them to all fly away at once. Well, little did I know that there was a crazy English bird lady who feeds them and treats them like pets. She gave me a good talking to for chasing the birds. I think more than a couple of my classmates got pictures of me chasing birds like a two year old but I got a great shot! So there!


As you can tell from the poncho photo we got rained on today. It wasn't so bad. Just quick little showers that moved through really quickly.


Next, we moved on to Primrose Hill to have a picnic lunch and fly some kites a la Mary Poppins. The view from the top of the hill was nice. We could see St. Paul's dome, the London Eye, and the Gherkin building all rising high above the rest of the skyline. Kite flying turned out to be really fun. I had a baby kite -- only about 4 inches across -- but it flew like a charm. Here's a picture of Lil having a go. Well done, Miss!


Next, we stopped off at Abbey Road in front of Abbey Road Studios and had some fun reenacting the famous Beatles cover. Here are my flatmates and I -- we are definitely the new fab four.


I spent the entire afternoon working on my Podcast and hiding from the rain. Make sure to give it a listen. Then tonight we went to see a theater production of Billy Elliot. Another busy day.

Time for bed. Visiting Hampton Court tomorrow!