Abbey Road

Hopping out a St. John's Wood tube station we paid a visit to the Abbey Road Music Studios - Famously where the Beatles recorded their album and crossed the Zebra crossing ... and admittedly I'm not their ultimate groupy, but I couldn't resist the temptation to recreate the scene.


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Will Smith in Leicester Square

Look who I bumped into in Leicester square ...

Glaty Mor and Galty Beag

Myself, Rob and John climbed Galty Mor and Galty Beag. Very, very nice and I hadn't really heard of it before Rob suggested it. Quite a taxing climb at the start but once off the lower ground we were flying it. Really, really nice views along the way - much nicer than the like of Carauntoohil, although the mountains themselves were less moonscapy. Here's the route we took:


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Oasis

Like a mirage in the desert we spotted an ice-cream van parked in the middle of nowhere on the way home ... we just had to stop!!!

From Snowdon-10-5-...

Climbing Snowdon - May 2008

A gang of us head up Snowdon, Wales highest mountain, in the second week in May. We choose the less travelled Rhyd Ddhu route, staying at a campsite right at the base of the mountain. The other routes up are extremely touristy and there is even a railway all the way to the top, which is pretty nuts. When you do reach the peak it's packed with people and even though the view is quite nice, you do feel quite eager to get off the peak and return to a quieter path.

From Snowdon-10-5-...

From Snowdon-10-5-...

From Snowdon-10-5-...

We choose a pretty mental route on the way down which frightened the s*** out of me, but no harm, we made it down and were rewarded by stunning views of the lake and valley.

From Snowdon-10-5-...

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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 ...