Some pictures from todays tour...

So I did the "Magic of London" tour today. I must say that, after having spent some time here and having become comfortable with the tube, I could have easily done this tour on my own. Regardless it was still fun and informative. One thing that did suck is I forgot my camera SD card in the computer. Thankfully the camera has some onboard memory, so after scaling back the picture size a bit I was still able to get about 50 pictures today. Here are a few with a little autostitch love thrown in (come on admit it...you'd start to think something was wrong if I DIDN'T use autostitch...)

This is the HMS Belfast...the last ship of the line from WWII.

Buckingham Palace. And would you believe the Queen wasn't home...didn't she know I was coming to visit???

The front of St Paul's Cathedral. This is an amazing place inside...some of which can be attributed to the fact that it was built more recently (e.g. 1670's).

The side of  St Paul's Cathedral, where you can see the huge dome. Only one bigger is St Peter's.

Guess I got out of Cumbria just in time...

Today Ireland and Scotland got 12 inches of rain...that's in one day....and this after a lot of rain in the past week (I've mentioned the rain and the full rivers before). Things are pretty bad up there according to the news channel. You can google it for yourself, or checkout this [random] link I picked.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6613750/Cumbria-floods-history-of-recent-storms.html

Not sure how much this did for my English cred...

I went to Harrods this afternoon as part of my Magic of London tour and had English tea and scones. Not a big hot tea fan (I get funny looks at breakfast when I turn the tea down...) but the scone and the cream and strawberry jam went together really well...

Geek Alert!

OK this has nothing to do with old building or old stones or old people...this has to do with a fan that has no blades! How cool is that? Of course, if you want one you'll have to drop a cool 199 pounds... I was amazed at the amount of air this thing puts out...very similar tech to the hand dryer I mentioned in recent post.

Salisbury Cathedral

Also found the time today to check out Salisbury Cathedral. So I really got my moneys worth today....train ride, Stonehenge, Old Sarum, AND Salisbury Cathedral....wow! Anyway, below are some more photos with some autostitch love...

The cathedral looking from the main entrance door.

Two very large trees surrounded by the cloister.

The front of Salisbury Cathedral at night. They light it up quite nicely...

Another night time shot of the Salisbury Cathedral. You can see that they are working on part of it on the left hand side.

Well tomorrow I head back to London, and I hope to hit the Churchill museum in the afternoon. Friday I've got a day tour of London set up...Tower of London, Thames cruise, changing of the guard, and tea at Harrods. Saturday I head to Paris for the day on the Eurostar. Sunday is open right now...for whatever is left I guess. And Monday I fly home.

Nice stones...

In ancient times...

Hundreds of years before the dawn of history

Lived a strange race of people... the Druids

No one knows who they were or what they were doing

But their legacy remains

Hewn into the living rock... Of Stonehenge

Well OK first thing they tell you is that Stonehenge was not built by the Druids...they spent quite a lot of time making sure you understood that...must be a sensitive subject for someone...

So here is what Stonehenge looks like on a windy wet day...not much different than on sunny day except maybe for the clouds. However the high winds and rain made it just a bit uncomfortable to be there. One cool fact for all the flight test types out there is that the UK test pilot school, ETPS, is located just down the road at MOD Boscombe Down in Wiltshire. I actually know a guy that went to ETPS...he currently is a JSF test pilot for Lockheed Martin.

Here is some more proof that I'm actually out visiting the sights and not holed up in pub somewhere. This is old Sarum. It's where Salisbury started out back in 1100 or so. They moved it a couple of hundred years later after they figured out there wasn't enough water. It was a bit drier than Stonehenge but it's still blowing pretty hard. Met a young Australian student while walking around and we swapped taking each others picture here.

Whodathunkit?

You can make money packagng and selling sheep droppings? Well, crap....

Cardiff Castle (or mabye Autostitch abuse?)

Been checking out Cardiff the last couple of days. Sorry for the lack of updates...stayed in another ritzy hotel that charges out the butt for internet access. Anyway, the main thing to see in Cardiff is Cardiff Castle. So guess where I went? Below are a couple of autostitch photos....this place was big and so autostitch comes in handy.

They called this the Arab room, I guess because of the design of the decor. This one might be called autostitch abuse...I think there are something like 20 photo's in this one, and it's definitely slightly bent.

Here you can see the openness of the area inside the walls of Cardiff Castle. The little place on the hill in the center was the original keep. The rest was added later. Some of the wall I'm standing on to take this picture was actually built by the Romans...which means it's over 2000 years old!

This is the flag on top of the keep.

Another shot of the keep and manor house in Cardiff Castle.

Hello from Chester

Well, I'm in Chester today. Haven't posted in the last couple of days as I've not had any access to the internet (well none that was free and I refuse to pay when they charge out the butt for it). Besides the lack of internet the weather has been kinda crappy too...not sure if the UK weather makes news in US but they had 70+ knot winds in southwest Wales and lots of rain everywhere...many of the streams we've gone by in the train looked flooded. Around lunch time today things finally cleared up again and the sun came out. It was a pretty slow day as everything is on a Sunday schedule, so I didn't get into town here until after 1500. Not much historical to see here...it's mostly a shopping town and they do have quite a few stores here....sort of like a big outdoor mall, except all the buildings are really old.

This is the train station in Chester at night. Liked the lighting.

Here is the Queen Hotel where I'm staying. Pretty ritzy place....liked the lighting here too. And it's right across the street from the railroad station.

Well tomorrow I'm off to Cardiff, where I'm staying for two nights. Hopefully I'll more stuff to post from there.

Hello from Stirling

Well today's stop was Stirling. When I got here the weather was very nice (as you can see in the pictures below) but it quickly went downhill early in the afternoon. I managed to spend some time at Stirling castle, but by the time I wanted to go to the Wallace monument, it was raining. So I holed up in the hotel making autostitch photos you see below.

The entrance to Stirling Castle

Inside Stirling Castle.

View of the city of Stirling from Stirling Castle.

As blue as the sky looked in these photos, it didn't take long for the clouds to roll in and the rain to start. Tomorrow I head to Glasgow for one more day in Scotland before I start my trek south back to London.

Loch Ness

Today was the day tour of the Scotish Highlands. We drove 337 miles today, with a couple of stops along the way. Our final destination was Loch Ness. I then hopped on a boat for a "one hour tour". Thankfully the weather cleared up a bit (it rained most of the way up).

Here is a picture of Loch Ness facing northeast (I think...sun was behind us). It's big and the water looks almost black. It is very deep also....almost 600 ft. The boat we were on had a depth meter/fish finder display as well as a dynamically updating display showing the bottom of the Loch WRT the boat.

An interesting rock slide area that we were told was made by a "monster" trying to escape....

This is about as close as I got to seeing a monster in Loch Ness. But that didn't detract from the beauty of the entire area. This is very pretty country similar to the US northwest, but with a lot more Lochs :-)

Tomorrow I'm off to Stirling, where I'll probably visit Stirling castle and the Wallace monument. Bruce, anything you want me to say to your boy William?

Rosslyn Chapel

Went to Rosslyn Chapel today. Here is a autostitched photo of the north face of the chapel. They are doing some heavy restoration as the chapel has suffered a great deal due to both neglect and mother nature. It's not the chapel you see in the movie by the way...but then again neither was Newtons tomb. Still an interesting place with some interesting history (like the possibility that the grandfather of the guy who built the chapel may have been to the north east US 50 years before Columbus). I rode the bus around for a couple of hours as it was raining pretty much all day. Tomorrow I head out on my day tour of Loch Ness and other parts of northern Scotland. Hopefully the weather will clear up a little bit for that :-)

Edinburgh Part 2

Here is a nighttme shot to Edinburgh castle shot from about the same place as the daytime shot earlier.

And yet another autostitch image...this one is the view of northern Edinburgh.

Well, tomorrow I plan on sleeping in just a little, and then heading to Roslyn chappel to hit a Divinci Code landmark. After that I'm not sure what I'm doing. The day after is my day tour of the Scottish highlands. And then I start my trip back south toward London.

Edinburgh Part1

Well today I made it to Edinburgh. It was a fairly long ride releative to my train rides to date, but I met a couple also on holiday and a guy born and raised in Edinburgh to chat with. At the end of my trip I ran into a girl born and raised in NYC who had just completed college at GW and was "avoiding life" by traveling for a year. Must be nice to pay for college with loans and then spend the money on travel afterwards... Anyway, I got to Edinburgh around 1330. After about half an hour of walking I made it to my hotel, dropped the bags, and hit the Royal Mile. Nothing too special there other than some interesting architecture. Grabbed lunch at a pub along the mile, then headed up to Edinburgh castle and did the tour there. A very impressive place. I've included some pictures below and in part 2 (cause Picasa won't load more than 4 photos at a time).

The castle from a road that runs up along side the battlements.

St Theresa's chappel, the oldest building in the castle (built around 1200).

The two statues at the gates to Edinburgh castle are Robert the Bruce and Mel Gibson...at least according to our Scottish guide :-)

Dyson Hand Drier

OK, how is it that an 800+ year old castle has the coolest and most modern hand dryers? They even work fairly well...only a little wiping on the pants afterwards :-)

Yorkminster

There was a bright crisp morning on the way to the train station, and as I walked past Yorkminster I just had to grab some more photos. They resulted in this autostitch image...