london

On my last trip, I took four cameras with me to Italy. Four! The digital SLR, the Holga, a point and shoot and the Vivitar Wide. It was a doozy. This time, I opted to take one camera - the simple plastic Vivitar. The idea was to just have fun, pack light and shoot with abandon. Turns out I should have brought a back up. I only have less than ten shots of London because the camera ended up breaking on me. I think the advance wheel just couldn't wind the new film forward and so I was left to tour a beautiful city without camera in hand. I managed to take some photos on our bus tour before the camera meltdown.

The bus tour hit all of the major attractions and it was well worth the pounds spent! We wouldn't have gotten to see everything in such a short amount of time otherwise. The day after the tour, we took advantage of the 24 hour ticket and rode the bus into South Kensington. We took in three museums (Natural History Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum and the Science Museum) and walked back to the hotel through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. That's alot of exercise for one day.

Over the weekend, we also got to head a bit north east into the town of Norwich to visit family. It was a nice opportunity to get out of the city and see some vast areas covered in green and homes with thatched roofs.

If we spent just a little more time in London, I would have tried to source some stationery or bookbinding stores. The few that I found had just closed for the day. We visited Sir John Soane's Museum (upon Micheline's suggestion) but it was closed on the Sunday. I also wanted to check out St. Bride's library but they're only open three days out of the week (one of which we spent on the bus tour). So our last day was spent walking around the city (Oxford street), taking the tube, Covent Garden and the British Museum.

I think we made ourselves a great little trip packed with sightseeing and plans to revisit. Next time, I won't wimp out and bring that extra camera.

PS. The weather was impeccable during our stay there. It was perfect spring weather, not a cloud in the sky and no rain to speak of. Oh, Toronto - what is with the fog this morning?

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