Lots of Old Stuff and One New Stuff

One of my favorite things in London is the London Eye. Sure, it's expensive, doesn't have student prices and forces you into close proximity with people that you wish understood the meaning of 'personal space', but it's also relaxing and gives you lots of pretty views of London:

(Look! Parliament again!... Also, Westminster.)

St. Paul's in the distance:


Yesterday was the Tower of London, another favorite of mine. You can't take pictures of the Crown Jewels unfortunately, but they look practically fake anyway. Maybe they are...

ALV is scared of the Tower (or my picture-taking... whichever):

The British tell you that the Tower wasn't originally a prison, but I think the guys that had time to do this in their cell walls would disagree:

Okay, now this is, in fact, a bit scary. Bayonets on machine guns! Wtf?:

The Tower Bridge:

The White Tower looking imposing:


Today we went to Bath and Stonehenge, which was a bit on the lighter side. I wish we had gotten more time at both of them (particularly Bath), but it was only a day trip. There were delicious muffins involved at one point though...

The Roman bath with the Bath abbey in the background:

The "Sacred Spring":

Milsolm Street and the reason Brits hate tourists, most likely. (Next to me for this picture was a con artist playing Three-card Monte with some young teenager as her target. People, teach your kids what a confidence trick is!):

Stonehenge's burial mounds, with the Beeker people. I couldn't make that name up:

And we all know what this place looks like, right? Well, it's still pretty cool in person:


On the way back, our bus driver (who had repeatedly run lights and driven like a crazy person) got into a fender bender. Of course, being a bus, it was the other guy's fender. He freaked out on us, even though (shockingly, considering our driver's driving) it was actually his fault. It was kind of fantastically hilarious. Ah, I love this town.