Days 1-3 in London: Portabello Road, Whiteley's, the Underground, Madame Tussaud's, the London Eye, the Dali Museum, Parliament and Big Ben, war memorials, Cleopatra's Needle, and Westminster Abbey
Date(s): March 10-20, 2006. Album by Stacy. Photos by Stacy and Eric. 1 - 56 of 56 Total. 140 Visits.
1 Wee car The cars across the pond are a *lot* smaller. This isn't even the smallest car I saw!
2 Whiteley's A mall a block from where we stayed. We were amused by the grandeur of the facade. We usually referred to it as 'Whitey's'.
3 Portabello Road ...just like in 'Bedknobs and Broomsticks'! You can get anything you want, as long as it is antique silver, china, costume jewelry, or old Audubon-style prints. Oh, and hot spiced wine! Note the colorful buildings.
4 Eric on the tube We got all around London on their clean, efficient and comfy subway system. "From his expression, I'm n..." View Comments...
5 Underground Here's the entrance to the subway. We usually got a day pass, and went all over the place.
6 Sherlock Holmes This was right near the Underground entrance in the previous pic. Why a fictional character gets a statue, I'm not clear- but it's here because it's on Baker Street- so I'm told by an English major. I never made the connection, I just thought it was named after that song by Gerry Rafferty.
7 London Planetarium Mom always wanted to visit Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, so we went. I was lucky that it's adjacent to the planetarium- I love those! The show was pretty brief, but still fun.
8 Madame Tussaud's I even got a program for my mom, but I lost it sometime later that day. :(
9 The Rock The first room was like a Hollowood party, with these guys just scattered around. I didn't realize at first that there were wax dudes in the crowd.
10 Eric and Patrick Stewart Look! It's Captain Picard!
11 Will Smith A man in black.
12 John Travolta, Eric, Samuel L. Jackson The Pulp Fiction line-up. Yes, Eric was in Pulp Fiction. He was 'Man #2.' John Travolta had stubble.
13 Tom Cruise I think the other chick is Jennifer Aniston.
14 Brad Pitt ...and that chick, whats-her-name.
15 Nicholas Cage I think he looks *reaaaally* creepy here, kind of crazed.
16 Morgan Freeman He looks rather frustrated.
17 Morgan Freeman I heard that proportinally, he gets paid the least for how successful he is- this is why he's frustrated. I think Susan Sarandon is next to him.
18 Buffy She looked a lot more real in person than she does in this picture.
19 Robin Williams Behind him is Steven Spielberg.
20 Anthony Hopkins Hannibal!
21 Sean Connery *James Bond joke here*
22 John Wayne I took this one for my dad.
23 Humphrey Bogart That famous dead guy. I had to look him up. See, I'm not old!
24 Hitler and Eric The famous basis for Godwin's Law (when Hitler's brought up in a discussion, the debate's over and the Hitler-bringer-upper loses). I was preparing pictures to sent to relatives, and picking out ones with us in them... I decided this was probably not a good one for the desk at work.
25 GWB Our waxy president.
26 GWB and Eric Eric's doing a 'Lynndie' (England). This is probably one of my favorite pictures. You can stand at the podium (Tony Blair was on the other side) and get a pic snapped, but I liked this much better. Also visible are Colonel Gaddafi and Vladimir Putin.
27 Stacy and Queen Victoria Don't you love the sour expression on the Queen's face?
28 Dalai Lama and Stacy By contrast, he seems pretty happy.
29 Stacy and Pope John Paul II Il Papa.
30 Gandhi ...or maybe Ben Kingsley.
31 Einstein For some reason, Einstein and some other philosophers were stationed right outside the cafeteria.
32 Stephen Hawking Eric's flashing gang signs or something because he listens to too much MC Hawking. I found this one almost as creepy as Nicholas Cage. I think it's the ruby-red lips. "Whoa those are some freaky..." View Comments...
33 Hose of Horror! Eric had to take a picture of this. This was on the way to the Chamber of Terrible Scary Things, Including Torture and Dead Bodies and So Forth. Photos were not allowed in that part, so this is the best we could do.
34 London Eye We'd seen pictures of this, much like this one, and figured it was just a monstrous ferris wheel.
35 London Eye And so it is, but instead of swinging buckets, it has fixed observation decks.
36 London Eye and the Thames You can see for miles and miles. That's after a 2-hour wait in line, and it was cold so we just took their word for it. And took pictures.
37 Dali Museum Here's one of the sculptures outside of the impressive Dali Museum.
38 Dali Museum Another statue; on the steps leading into it was a guy dressed as Dali talking on a lobster phone and generally acting odd, just like Dali.
39 Big Ben Big Ben, part of Parliament, and a guy sitting on the bridge begging for money. I was freezing my butt off, so I felt bad for this guy.
40 Big Ben Look! It's a big-ass clock!
41 Big Ben and Parliament I think they blew this up recently for that V for Vendetta movie.
42 Parliament Yep, there it is. We didn't go out of our way to find it, but just happened upon it after wandering around the area.
43 Parliament I imagine this is the sort of architecture that Prince Charles likes. Apparently businesses are trying to build a lot of verticle glass ice-cube trays and make London like New York, and he's pissed about it.
44 Boudica This is at Westminster Pier. She pissed off the Romans quite a lot.
45 Battle of Britain memorial Westminster Pier is like warrior row.
46 Battle of Britain memorial The 3-D effect of this memorial was pretty interesting. It had other sections as well, showing all sorts of aspects of the war, both battle and behind-the-scenes.
47 Air forces memorial This big gilt eagle was visible from a long way off.
48 Air forces memorial It's hard to imagine airplanes in 1914, when most people didn't even have refrigerators.
49 Sphinx 2 of these were flanking the obelisk commonly called 'Cleopatra's Needle'. I think the face looks exactly like Will Smith.
50 Cleopatra's Needle This was brought over in 1819. You can see how weathered it is.
51 Sphinx This was the other sphinx. You can see a hole on the other side of it's left paw- this is a shrapnel wound from the first German air attack of WW1 in 1917.
52 Winston Churchill Parliament Square. There was a whole row of signs protesting the war in Iraq nearby.
53 Protest This was one of the signs visible from Parliament.
54 Westminster Abbey Officially, the Collegiate Church of St Peter.
55 Westminster Abbey How goth!
56 Westminster Abbey It's all full of grandeur and such.
