Old Westminster

It's freezing in London, but I went on walk anyways and tried to stay warm. It was called "Old Westminster"- really interesting- show parts of the area I had never seen before.

View of Westminster Abbey- Rose window visible
View of the Houses of Parliament

Sovereign's Entrance- where the Queen enters when she opens Parliament

View of the Victoria Tower- part of the Houses of Parliament opposite Big Ben

Jewel Tower-the crown jewels used to be kept here until they moved to the Tower

St. Michael's Smith Square

Georgian Houses on a street opposite Parliament- lots of MPs past and present have lived here

Sign showing that underneath the house was an air raid shelter-used during the Blitz

Gandhi's London

In honour of the 6oth anniversary of India's independence, there have been a few walks about Gandhi while he was in London so I went on one on Saturday. It mainly focused on his time as a law student at the Inner Temple Inn, near Westminster.

The Christmas tree in front of the ice rink at Somerset House
The ice rink at Somerset House

The Temple Church at Inner Temple (the one from the Da Vinci Code)

The Hall of Middle Temple (one of the Inns of Court- all barristers in England must register in one of the four Inns)-the first performance of Twelfth Night took place here

Part of Middle Temple

Another one of the Inns of Court

One of the streets near the Inns of Court- all lawyers' offices

King's Cross-St. Pancras

Over the weekend I took a tour of the King's Cross-St. Pancras area with their rail stations. King's Cross trains go to the North and Scotland and the trains from St. Pancras go to the Midlands and starting next week to the continent. They just finished restoring St. Pancras which was an old Victorian station. The whole area is being revamped as it has generally been known as where you go to pick up prostitutes!!

The ceiling in St. Pancras- you can't tell from the picture but it is sky blue.
The front facade of St. Pancras station

Front of King's Cross- we caught the train to Edinburgh here

Platform 9 and 3/4s from Harry Potter

The old St. Pancras church-oldest site of Christian worship in Britain though the present building dates back to the 14th century

The churchyard of St. Pancras church- Mary and Percy Shelley declared their love for each other here-(over the grave of her mother, Mary Wollestonecraft, who has since been moved)

When the railroad was built they had to move all the bodies elsewhere. Thomas Hardy was involved and they stacked the gravestones by the tree. They have since become embedded in the roots

The skating rink at the Natural History museum-actually in South Kensington, near where I am living.

Christmas in front of the Natural History Museum

Georgian London

Over the weekend, I took a tour of "Georgian London,"-which basically means the 1700s. Much of the walk took place around Bloomsbury and the British Museum as many of the buildings from the 1700s are still there. Also the area was first developed in that time.

Trees in Kensington Gardens- the colours didn't turn out in the photo, but the leaves are turning- quite pretty
Not a Georgian building, but one of the few half-timbered buildings still left from Tudor times

A street with typical Georgian houses- this street is actually only a couple of blocks from where I lived this summer

Detail of a 18th century house

The front of Dr. Johnson's house in Gough Square- it is a museum and furnished as it would have been in the 1700s

The church of the Holy Sepulcre without Newgate

A reminder for Jessie and Bill- the theatre where Spamalot is performed