Howdy!
Sorry Brandon and I have not been doing blog posts lately. Seems like every free moment we have is spent writing our dissertations. Thankfully I am now sitting with around 9,000 words (out of the 12,000 required) so I feel comfortable enough to spend a bit of time writing a post for you all! Brandon is at 10,700 (out of 15,000)
Since we have missed several updates the past week, I thought I'd just post a bunch of pictures so you can see what we have been up to the past month. Because, let's face it, a majority of you probably just scan these posts and look at the pictures anyway, so I'll keep the words to a minimum this time ;)
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| We visited the Sherlock Holmes museum back in May when the Stover Seniors were in town. Here is our attempt at being Dr. Watson and the great detective. |
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| Another remnant from May with the Stovers - Enjoying a pint on the stage before seeing the musical "Once" |
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The following pictures are sights from Kew Gardens - a large botanical garden in South West London. Brandon and I made the trip out there one bright and sunny day to enjoy a picnic lunch!
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| The Kew Palm House - a giant green house with plants from all over the world |
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| At Kew Palace - a formal royal residence of King George III |
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| The Japanese garden at Kew |
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| A modern tunnel built to look ancient |
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| In front of the tunnel |
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| On the five story high tree top canopy walk at Kew | |
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Kayla, a lovely friend of mine from Millikin stopped in London for one day as part of her month long backpacking trip through Europe, here are a few of the things we did that day!
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| On my way to Hogwarts! |
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| An a visit to the Doctor was a must... |
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Brandon and I took a day trip to Oxford to visit the city, but mostly to enjoy an afternoon at The Thirsty Meeple - the UK's only board game cafe. Several from the Goldsmiths tabletop gaming society went as well. Now Brandon and I are making plans to someday run our own board game cafe...
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| One of the many colleges in Oxford |
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| One of the college accommodations in Oxford - seriously looks like a castle... |
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| The Radcliffe Camera - a round building which is one of the University of Oxford libraries |
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| Another University of Oxford building |
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| The board game cafe! |
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Lately, we have enjoyed many cultural offerings in London, including an orchestra concert in a car park, a stage version of Orwell's
1984, and Bizet's
The Peal Fishers at the English National Opera.
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| The view of London from the car park after hearing Sibelius Symphony No. 5 |
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| The London Coliseum - home to the English National Opera |
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We celebrated our fourth anniversary on June 25th by going on an impromptu Thames River Cruise (okay, not really a cruise, more of a river taxi...but it was still awesome!)
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| View of the Tower Bridge from the Thames Boat Taxi |
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| Most people get the "London Bridge" and "The Tower Bridge" confused, but as you can see here, the London Bridge is actually quite boring... |
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| Tate Modern and the Millennium Bridge from the Thames |
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And finally, we spent yesterday morning with a friend we met through a geocaching event. He wanted to climb to the top of St Pauls, since there is a virtual cache up there, so we made it up the 528 to the top of dome and got rewarded with some spectacular views of London!
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| Almost to the top, here we took a short breather about 3/4 of the way up on a wider outcropping |
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| At the top! |
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| A view of the scary stairs you have to climb in the actual dome |
Hope you all had a lovely June!! July will be taking us to Italy and Greece, before August brings us back to the US, so we still have lots to look forward to this summer!
