London: Hyde Park

I've started uploading pictures to my photo albums page. I'll still post them here, but if you go to that page you'll find a lot more as well.

The next day, we went to Hyde Park. All of my pictures come from Hyde Park and the urban area surrounding it. Which was very urban and, depending on which side of the park we were on, either kind of gross or really clean.

It looks like a run for breast cancer had just ended when we arrived. We managed to score some free water after they had cleared out the people but not the facilities, though we didn't take too many because we didn't want to be loaded down with them. :(

Then we walked out onto the very classy streets north of Hyde Park. This area was very artsy; nice areas and people hanging and selling paintings and portraits on the sidewalks. There was a ridiculous amount of traffic in this area as well, later in the day.

Back into the park.

Stephen being deported.

The Princess Diana Memorial Fountain. Kind of neat, very busy.

The London Underground. The tube. The metro. The subway, though they don't call it that. Mind the gap.

The street our hostel lives on, and the pizza from the Pizza Hut around the corner.

London Heathrow Airport the next day, as I waited to depart for Paris!

First day of London pics

I arrived at 5am on Sept 1, and took a shuttle from Gatwick Airport to Heathrow Airport to meet Stephen who was arriving there in an hour or two. I get there and eventually he shows up and we take the tube to the hostel. They let us drop our bags off, but... suddenly danger! They can't let us check in until 2pm. It's around 7-8am at this point, and we're pretty tired since we had woken up at about 7-8am the previous morning (different time zone of course).

So we wandered around the city, and eventually came back to the hostel around noon, and fell asleep in the lounge until 2pm. Then we fell asleep in our beds until noon the next day. We still didn't have any plans though we had spoken to one of the hostel-girls about things to do so we had a general idea of where to go and what to see.

These pics were taken on our first day in London: Nice chilly windy overcast day. I'm not sure if it was our first full day or our arrival day. I have no idea where we were for the most part, but I know some of you fellow readers have been there, so does anything look familiar?

You'll have to click this to see the full sign. I have no idea what "smart water" is.

Some pictures of some streets and some cars.

The British Telecom tower and a sign with some gas prices on it. Keep in mind that these are in Great Britain Pounds, so they're actually paying about $2/Litre!

The next pic is some building that felt it was necessary to reflect the BT tower.

So we're walking down the street, and this guy is shouting at a meter maid who is writing him a ticket or something and looks like he's about to tow the guy's car. This was evidenced by the tow truck sitting next to it. The guy repeatedly shouts "Get a real job!", gets in his car and drives off. Then the meter maid focuses on the next car... and prepares the tow truck.

These tow trucks don't fuck around. They get your car. They don't just grab the front and pull it away... they reach underneath the car and lift it right off the ground. See the pics. We stood around and watched the entire thing. This process, I believe, is called "clamping".

More pics. A red telephone booth and a weird building (it was cylindrical and hollow -- I walked into the center, which was outdoors, and took pictures).

Neat buildings. One that I call the "hive", and another one that just looks kind of weird, though the effect is lost in a photo. I should have made one of those red/blue 3D photos. If only...

Graffito.

Looking at Stephen's camera in the hostel room.