London & Oxford

Wow...two posts in one night!! 

Here are some photos from London and Oxford from this past weekend. 

Houses of Parliament

Big Ben

More Houses of Parliament

National Portrait Gallery

Giant ship in a bottle on the 4th plinth. Soon to be replaced by a giant blue rooster.

S started small with ducks. He's since graduated on to swans. 

Apparently this doesn't hurt.

Swan

Who says swans have to be graceful all the time? 

Drying off after the belly flop.

On K's birthday, we walked to South Parks. 

South Parks and the 'dreaming spires' in the background

Wintertime 2010-2011

It's been a while since we've posted - sorry about that. We were enjoying all 6in of snow that fell, which also happened to bring the country to a standstill. 

Frosted Berries in the Park

Fun Frosted Leaves

Even the Spiderwebs got frosted. Turns out spiderwebs are everywhere - notice them a lot more when they are highlighted. 

More fun spiderwebs

Frosted Berries after a second frozen fog night...which meant K needed to retake all the pictures from the previous trip around the park. 

Clearly the frost was fun. 

Then the snow came...

S on a very vacant street. 

The streets stayed this way until it melted. Snow plows apparently do not exist in England. S saw one, but we never saw where it plowed. The streets were filled with fluffy white snow, then gross brown slush, which froze every night turning the city into an ice skating rink.
(Even typing this, K's computer, which is on English spelling, does not recognize the word plow!)

S's snowman - with broccoli for eyes!

The river near the park froze over. Turned the world into a black and white photo

More fun frozen reflections

Since we're old married folks now, we feed ducks. Well, we have left over bread which we feed to the ducks. Anyways, we fed the said left over bread to the ducks, who are not equipped for snow. They all just sat around us with frozen beaks. 

More River...

...Reflection pictures

Fun frozen ice blades....K wishes she had a macro lens at this point in time

Some normally uninteresting plant, made more interesting by the snow

S is proud of his snowman. Rightly so, it was the last thing to melt. And our neighbors (from New Zealand) had to use structural supports (in the shape of bowls, pans, etc) to build theirs. 

Icicles hanging off of our back porch

Feeding ducks leads to epic battles for a piece of bread. The gulls are evil.

Action shot of the duck trying to escape the gull.

Which Mr. Duck wins...

We've named this guy blue, yes we've even named ducks...but look closely at his beak. 

Ice makes for slipper landings.

On Christmas Day we went to walk the Port Meadows. (See previous posts for info on this)

Boats were frozen in place

Cross Country Tracks

Our Flaming Christmas Pudding!

All over England - Bath, Stratford, London and Oxford.

England does lawns very nicely. This fine example is the backyard of Blenheim - a mere couple hundred acres.

Obligatory shot of the Palace, which has better lighting each time we visit.

Driveway to Blenheim Palace.

Roman Bath's are found coincidently in the city of Bath. They happen to also be Britain's only natural spring. 

Entrance to the Baths

The Royal Crescent - some of the highest priced real estate in England.

Autumnal colors...in Bath.

Bath Cathedral

Changed Priorities.

Shakespeare's Birthplace in Stratford-upon-Avon

Ann Hathaway's house. Here we learned that to clean a chimney, they would tie a string around the neck of a chicken or goose and lower them into the chimney. Inevitably, after a hard day's work of chimney cleaning, they would end up on the dinner table. 

Apples

Cotswolds

Field in the setting sun, back when the sun set at 6pm.

Stone walls - everywhere in the Cotswolds

Stow-on-the-Wold, a typical cute market village. On market days, once all the stock for sale had arrived, they would close off the streets to prevent runaway sheep!

Our carved jack-o-lanterns. 

Inside the Tower of London. Also in this courtyard, Anne Boylen was killed. According to our Beefeater,  the executioner was so swift that she was still moving her eyes and mouth in prayer for 20 seconds after her head was removed.

Guarding the Crown Jewels, Coronation Spoon, and other over-the-top ceremonial pieces. This includes the second largest cut diamond (Cullinan I), which is 503 carats, that sits on the end of a sceptre used in the coronation ceremonies.

Legend has it that as long as there are six ravens at the Tower, Britain will stand. So as a safeguard, they keep 7 on site.

The "main" tower. In total there are 20 towers on Tower Hill

Bonus points if you know the name of this bridge...

Us on the Thames

Where apples stay during Autumn...

versus, where pears descend to.

K's college at Oxford has a crypt.

At the Pitt River's Museum. Basically a man collected things, only to donate them to Oxford.

Fun Berries

Chilly Hot Air Balloon ride over the park...

Sunset. Time: 4:12pm....