Canada is cool..

This is the sort of thing that would happen if you left me in charge of town planning! Good old Ottawa.. check it out on Google street view =)

Royal Wedding preparations

Outside Buckingham Palace, a photo by kipperfrog on Flickr.

I love all the flowers and flags the royals have wheeled out for the wedding next week - this is what the pavement in front of Buckingham Palace looks like at the moment.. hmm.. I wonder what their colour scheme is going to be..

They've also built some temporary studios outside the palace for all the international press to use:

It's a shame none of the Americans will actually be able to use the palace as a backdrop in their live broadcasts though.. lights out at 12.30am UK time, just before the evening news in the US!

Pumpkin Plants

Pumpkin plants, a photo by kipperfrog on Flickr.

It's time to try again with the pumpkin plants! Hopefully they'll actually do something this year before being eaten by slugs. I have actually managed to plant them in April rather than September this time, so there is at least a glimmer of hope we will have a pumpkin in time for halloween!

Centre Pompidou

In my previous post I mentioned the Richard Rogers, the architect behind the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Lloyds Building in London. I thought I'd post a couple of pictures from our visit to Paris in February for comparison.

Here's the Pompidou, I absolutely love it! I can't decide if it looks like a scaffolded hamster cage or a chocolate factory, but either way, it's very cool! =)

The City

I was up in London on a course for 3 days this week, that's the second one up there in a month! I actually quite like having to go to "The City", it's a bit of London we never usually see when we go up there for day trips. My course was on New Broad Street, which is just around the corner from Liverpool Street tube station, so the first day, I braved the tube all the way, not nice! The Northern line was absolutely rammed, and I ended up watching train after train go by, people squeezing themselves in, and ducking their heads to avoid the doors. My elbows are evidently not honed for city travel. After finding out everyone else on my course had walked from London Bridge - in half the time it took me to catch the tube, I decided to give it a go on the way home. It's a great walk!

Here are some photos I took on my way in the following morning.

The Shard is coming on nicely, it's going to be enormous when it's finished! This one was taken just outside London Bridge station, as you can see I was nearly stampeded by commuters when I stopped to take the picture.

The Shard, a photo by kipperfrog on Flickr.

Here's the view of it from half way across the bridge:

Tower Bridge and HMS Belfast:


The Monument:


Leadenhall Market:


I made a slight detour to take a look at one of my most favourite buildings ever, the inside out building, Lloyds of London (by Richard Rogers of Pompidou Centre fame):


and The Gherkin:


The Heron Tower is nearly finished now. Last time I saw it, there were only foundations!


There was a great cut-through to get from Bishopsgate through to New Broad Street, by walking down by St Botolph. In the churchyard there is, what looks like, the tiniest restaurant in the world. Apparently it started its life as a Victorian Turkish Bathhouse, modelled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Reading up about it, it turns out the building you can see is just the entrance, with the main area spreading out under the ground: