London: in pictures

I am blogging from a National Express East Coast train travelling from London to Edinburgh. Is it a sign of crappy Canadian wireless that I'm shocked to discover free wireless anywhere (Edmonton airport, for example), much less on a mode of travel? I'm totally plugged in to my seat: power cable, charging cell phone (through USB port) and earphones to block out the two groups of chatty people in front of me. (In honor of this train's ultimate destination, I'm listening to the Glaswegian band Travis). My total isolation from the world would be an affront to Nicole if she wasn't in another train car altogether.

I am heading to the Edinburgh Fringe after a lovely few days in London which I spent wandering around. Nicole and I saw and giggled at this tavern:

I stumbled around Picadilly and found 10 Henrietta Street, the house where Jane Austen's brother lived and where she would stay when visiting London.

We went to a beer festival where Nicole's friends won a cute little stuffed ram. And where we sampled beer from many different places (alas, no Canadian beers were present).

I saw a Banksy:

And, in a nod to the second chapter of my dissertation, I wandered around Portman Square. It's only 2-3 blocks from Oxford Street (a major shopping drag) and the exteriors have been mostly redone or demolished. On one side it looks like a Metropolitan police office, on another it's a hotel (the Churchill), on the third it's businesses and the fourth converted flats and a private club. The private club is at No. 20 and is historically relevant to my work, being designed by Robert Adam. Alas, I couldn't get up the nerve to knock and see if I could walk around.

Yesterday I took the bus to Greenwich (technically still in London) where I saw the gorgeous buildings of the Royal Naval College

and the Maritime Museum


and the Queen's House, which features an absolutely beautiful spiral staircase designed by Inigo Jones in the early 1600s.




A short walk up the hill behind the Queen's house led to the Royal Observatory, a place of major astronomical import and, for better known purposes, the home of Greenwich Mean Time and the Prime Meridian.

That silver line that I'm standing on? Zero degrees longitude, baby.

Next up, the Edinbrugh Fringe, for which I have done no planning except to have Nicole secure accommodations. The Fringe program is as dauntingly thick as a Sears catalogue and I've barely gone through 1/4 of it.