"It was a September evening, and not yet seven o'clock, but the day had been a dreary one, and a dense drizzly fog lay low upon the great city. Mud-colored clouds drooped sadly over the muddy streets. Down the Strand the lamps were but misty splotches of diffused light which threw a feeble circular glimmer upon the slimy pavement. The yellow glare from the shop-windows streamed out into the steamy, vaporous air, and threw a murky, shifting radiance across the crowded thoroughfare. There was, to my mind, something eerie and ghost-like in the endless procession of faces which flitted across these narrow bars of light,--sad faces and glad, haggard and merry. Like all human kind, they flitted from the gloom into the light, and so back into the gloom once more."
~Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of the Four~
This wasn't quite our experience of London, but there was a wonderful feeling of history and even mystery shrouding the city. Having come from New Zealand, which is a very 'young' country in so far as Western history goes; London seemed ancient. And that was one aspect that I loved about it.
I was going through some of our photos from a few years ago when we were living in that great city, and got a bit reminiscent. I'm home sick at the moment, and don't have any drawings that I can share just yet, so I hope you don't mind if I diverge into some photography. Here is some of what we experienced in London...
The Albert Memorial ~ Regent's Park
(and behind it is the Royal Albert Hall)
The view from out the window of our attic flat in Notting Hill
Decorations at Oxford Circus
St. Paul's Cathedral
(with the usual queues out the door)
Green Park Tube Station
(despite the crowds - I really miss the tube!)
The Natural History Museum
(and the museums are awesome)
And the iconic Buckingham Palace
Hurrah for London!
Right, I'm off to have a cup of tea.
