On the road again

I had dinner with a delightful group on Saturday. I was introduced to this duo:



(They do a lot of comedy a la Victor Borge, too. Thought I'd pass them along.)

During dinner (where an iPad is a necessity) we watched this video [Kira, I don't think you'll like the end of this.]:



We also listened to a lot of music like this:



And we ate a delicious, very British dinner. Except the cheese course, where we had, of course, Wensleydale cheese, and a delicious French desert. (Served with my favorite British clotted cream.) Fantastic blend. :) A most beautiful evening.

Bath

May I recommend that you pop over to Mona's this weekend. She posted some pictures that she took while we were in Bath. She has some fun quotes and links, too. Bath is delightful!

Hyde Park!!

The Rose Garden in Hyde Park. Can you imagine the riot of color in the summer?

One of the beautiful flowers.

Walking through Hyde Park. Lots of walkers, runners, and cyclists.

All sorts of gorgeous trees.

"The Dell." One of my favorite parts of the park.

Isn't it beautiful?

This is the best picture of this tree I could get. I wish it turned out better. The stark contrast of colors was so amazing.

Another beautiful, overexposed tree.

The Serpentine.

See the horses coming down Rotten Row?

Kensington Gardens.

The Albert Memorial is through the trees.

There it is. (Isn't that blue sky wonderful?)

There is Prince Albert.

Top of the memorial.

Middle. (Make sure and click on these, so you can see them bigger.)

A whole bunch of movers and shakers.

Another day in the neighborhood

Went to Leicester Square to buy tickets. This is for you, Seth:

Went on a walking tour based around this group:

On the walk, we saw this beautiful piece of art outside of a children's hospital. Any guesses as to who it is?

Obligatory cloud picture. :)

Where we ate dinner. Sorry for the bad picture. My camera isn't much into night pictures. (It's called Garfunkel's by the way.)

The amazing, wonderful, deep, funny play we saw last night. It was fantastic!

Monday, Monday

Don't have much time to write, but wanted to give you a glimpse of my Monday. We went to Hampton Court and got to the gardens right at sunset! Well, you can imagine my delight. And the fact that I took way more pictures of clouds than I did of the palace. Hm....

Hampton Court from the front.

View of the sunset.

Another view. (By the way, sillouhettes against a sunset sky are one of my favorite things on this earth. [sigh])

In honor of...

In honor of another part of our Saturday, I have two recordings for you. The first was actually recorded in Carnegie Hall, but is the Academy of St. Martins in the Fields or whatever it would technically be called. (I chose this recording because I love this piece.)



This second is actually recorded where I have stood. Fun for me! [Note: this is only the first part of the piece. It will have a link to the rest, but just thought I should warn.] This piece is also very beautiful.



Here are a few of my pictures. The first is of the church there kind of in the background. I'm sorry to say I didn't get a better picture.

Here's the inside. Isn't it gorgeous? The ceiling is so beautiful.

Here is the organ.

Here is the crypt underneath. Some of you have probably heard that there is a cafeteria in the crypt that you can eat at. So we did. As we sat at a table, there were inscriptions under our feet on the floor with people's names and dates, etc...

Check out these clouds

The clouds looked gorgeous today.

Do you agree?

Oh, look! There's beautiful clouds AND Big Ben.

Beautiful clouds AND Parliament.

It was such a wonderful day! LOOK at these clouds!!

I love these clouds AND where I am.

What a day, what a day!

And on top of it all, a book market. A BOOK market. Does a day get better than this? Not much anyway.

On a different note, a highlight of my trip was yesterday when we went here:

I hadn't planned on visiting there, but it worked out that way. And I was so glad we did. In our wanderings through the store, we came to the musical instrument part. Lots of grand pianos. Of course I was drooling. There were signs that said not to touch, but ask for assistance. The man working there had been singing, but while he was taking a break, I asked if I could play a piano. He said I could unless I was going to play Fuer Elise. That made me smile. I promised to play something else. At one point, I started a pretty fun piece and quit when I got to where I no longer had it memorized. When I stopped, I found him looking at me. He said he was waiting for the big part. He sat down at the piano next to me and we both played the "big, bangy part." Then I started another piece he also knew and we played the bangy part of that one, too. We gathered quite a crowd. What a high! He absolutely made my day. I'm so glad we met!

I'm here

The colors are gorgeous here.

Beautiful walking areas.

This is what I saw today. Pardon the non-perfect picture. I was just about to cross a street.

We walked around here. A very long walk. Wonderful memorials. Unlike anything I've ever seen. (A non-traveler here.) I loved seeing the William Wilberforce memorial.

Something from the outside. This picture turned out better than I thought it would.