London Eye, Part II

So we finally had a chance to actually go up the London eye. A half hour roundtrip with some pretty nice views of London ...

April Snows

Four seasons in one day guys. All of what you see below was gone by the afternoon, even our snowman. First time I've seen snow like this in years - and this is April, what's going on!!!

London Looking Good in the Nice Weather

As the summer rolls in London is starting to look nicer and nicer ... here's a few early morning and blue sky shots ...

The Rosetta Stone

I didn't get to see much else at the British Museum the day I went to the Terracotta Army, but there was one item I couldn't miss - The Rosetta Stone - It was the translations on this stone that allowed scholars to crack the meaning of hieroglyphs for the first time. Pretty impressive.

The Terracotta Army

Managed to catch the Teraccota Army, which was on show in the British Museum, before it moved on in April. It was really cool and would make you want to go to China to see the rest of them. No photographs inside unfortunately, but I sneaked a few ...




... Okay, so it's not actually the terracotta army in the photo. It's actually look-alikes that school kids at the museum did. ... pretty cool though!

Canary Wharf

I've been working around here for several months now. It's pretty impressive - especially the towers.

Babbage's Difference Engine and Calculators

One Saturday morning we headed off to the Science Museum for a gawk. They some of Babbage's difference engines there to view - the oldest computers / calculators. Huge contraptions. Pretty cool stuff if you're a computer scientist.

The New Guinness Red ... hmmm :-)

Guinness have brought out a new brew of Guinness called Guinness Red. I think it might only be available here in London - haven't seen it at home yet. It's pretty nice - subtly sweeter than the normal variety.

Sushi

Tried Sushi for the first time ever. Pretty nice. Not nearly as fishy as I expected. John had a few more plates than I did ...

Fire in Stratford

There was a huge fire out in stratford. We didn't know where it was coming from at first. It looked like Canary Wharf was on fire. The whole sky was full of smoke ...

NFL in Canary Wharf

There was an NFL exhibition match in the city on the weekend. They brought an oversized player down to Canary Wharf ...

Taking Security to the Extreme in the Nanny State

I think they're taking to counter terrorism to the extreme here ...

IMAX

We went to the IMAX catch Beowulf. It's so big its incredible. The normal size cinema screen is dwarfed by it. And to make it even better we were watching in 3D - A what a film to pick for 3D :-)

The London Eye - Part 1

I say part 1 because I still haven't gone up it - but it looks great on the South Bank. Watch this space ...

Greenwich Observatory

I loved this place. Steeped in history. The Prime Meridian of the World. ... sounds very important. 0 degrees east and west is marked by a laser just outside the observatory ... hmm - or is it? Apparantly if you have your GPS receiver handy the meridian line is about 20 meters to the left - for "military reasons" so I'm told.



Apart from that, in the museum downstairs has Harrisson's H4 timepiece - amazing! The first accurate enough watch to calculate longtitude.



Upstairs in the observatory was a telescope where you could see Pluto.

Notting Hill Carnival

Our first weekend here we randomly met an old friend of Nici's in the tube station. He brought us down to Notting Hill where the famous Carnival was on that weekend. It was pretty cool. It seemed like a really affluent area and completely shut down for the weekend - there was a really fun band dressed as superheroes, where we stopped for ages.

Trafalgar Square

When I was here when I was a kid the big attraction was the millions of pigeons that lived in trafalgar square. However, some big spoil sport meany banned feeding the pigeons and now all that's left is protestors and random art on the empty fourth plinth.

The Millenium Dome

The largest tent in the world, cost a billion to build, totally flopped when it opened, and in a last ditch effort to recoup some costs the UK government did what it does best and privatised ... within a very short space of time the newly rebranded "O2 Dome" became a big success. I'm yet to go to a gig there, but the cinema there is great :-)

The Sweet Free Checkout

I'd like to see the one that isn't sweet free ...

Pop Art

There was a pretty cool pop art exhibition in the National Portrait Gallery. Lot of Andy Warhol paintings - remember the Maryln Monroe screen prints?

Big Ben and the Houses of Parlaiment

You can't go to London without going here. Henry VIII used to live here. ... so there's quite a lot of history attached ... all I wanted to see was big ben chime :-) ... although it was very impressive.

West End Theatre

We tried out our first west end show - Footloose - great fun, we had a great view ... have to go see another one pretty soon :-)

The National Gallery

We were walking around Trafalgar Square and noticed the National Gallery at its top end.

Walk in, turn right and staring you in the face are Van Gogh's sunflowers. What a start to a great collections. This place is a must see ... go have a look.

Welcome to London 25-8-2007 to ... whenever!

Phew! After a hectic six weeks trying to get settled, I'm finally getting back to the blog. I'm in London now, and it seems I'll be here for quite some time to come. Lots to see, lots to do and I'll be a long time getting through it - loads of fun!

Climbing Carrauntoohil 16-8-2007

Myself, Rob, John and Jim headed of to climb the tallest mountain in Ireland - Carrauntoohil. The mountain isn't far from Killorglin in Co. Kerry. There's two routes up the mountain. We decided to take the 'Devil's Ladder Route'. The devil's ladder is a small but very steep ridge that you have to climb at a certain point in the hike. The scenery here was spectacular - you wouln't think you were in Ireland at all. It took us 3 1/2 hours to get up and 2 1/2 to get get back at a fairly easy pace. I must try it from the other route the next time - the Carra Route. Beautiful!












The very top of the mountain was cloud covered and made the whole thing very errie. Somebody had managed to haul a giant, iron cross and haul it to the top at some stage over the years.

Puck Fair 10th to 13th -6-2007

A few of us headed down to Puck Fair, in Killorglin, for the weekend. The Puck fair is a bizzare festival which kicks of with a goat, captured from the Kerry hills, that they hoist up onto a giant pedestal for the duration of the fair. Between putting him up and taking him down is three days of festival in the town. Here's a video of the goat (Jimmy) going up with "Puck ar Buile" theme tune being sung.







Killorglin's actually in a pretty beautiful part of the country. Not far away was Rossbeigh where we went for a swim on the second day.



The town is also on the edge of the Magillycuddyreeks mountain range, where Carountoohill, Ireland's tallest mountain is ... Very beautiful.