Created by Henry VIII in 1532, St. James Park today sits between Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace. Very nice green space with lots of wildlife. Click the menacing blackbirds for the gallery.

Lots of construction here. You can’t swing an eel without hitting a crane in central London. Click the crane picture to see what they’re building in Knightrider Street:

conveniently located on Brixton Hill

A smattering of what I shot around the Tower of London. Click the girl and dolphin below for the gallery.

The Solstice Division Table where the trackings of travels happen. Happy Solstice!

Some solo tourista adventuring today. I’ve mastered navigation here as well as I’m likely to, and Notaw had some workstuff to deal with in the morning, so I went down to some of the tourist hotspots. Fish and chips at the Tower of London, war protesters at Parliament Square, and boating down the Thames (or Old Chap River as they call it here). Not being much of a swimmer, I’ve never been on a boat before. Nice thing about the Thames is that if your boat sinks, it doesn’t matter if you can swim or not because the undercurrent will pull you under either way. Cheerie-o! Met up with Notaw at the Tate Modern. Too late for the Dali and Film exhibition, but it’ll be there for a few more days yet. Took many many photos, more than I’ll get to sift through tonight. I’ll try to at least get a highlight assortment up though. Meanwhile, a few fun facts:

The Tower of London is easily as tourist packed as the Grand Canyon

They charge 10 pounds to go inside Westminster Abbey

There are three or four war protesters yelling at cars outside of Parliament

Abe Lincoln rates a statue in Parliament Square!

The Tate Modern isn’t as nice as you might expect

And there’s only two things you really need in a restaurant:

I’ve still got a huge number of British Museum pics in the can, may not get them all posted properly in a timely fashion. I’ll continue to dribble out galleries as I get them done.

The British Museum’s Enlightenment collection really puts the historical heart and soul of the institution on display. It’s like an 18th century dilettante noble doing interior design. Click on the grumpy enlightened men below for the gallery.

Spent a little time with the America collections. Click the stone statue for a gallery of Central and South American goodness.

Construction of the British Museum’s current home was started in 1823, and there have been several expansions since. As it stands today, it’s huge. I know there is much I didn’t have time to see, but I’m not sure how much. A great deal. Click the pic below to see the exterior and atrium.