Norman's Blog

Tuesday, 3 October 2017

London haunts

I had a day in London recently and I looked up some old haunts such as the view of Tower Bridge from London Bridge that I used to pass twice a day to get to work. Plus to the right HMS Belfast which is a permanent museum and another temporary visitor of a destroyer tied up alongside.

And a view back across London Bridge with a view of the Shard, which is Europe's second tallest building after the OKO Tower in Moscow which beats it convincingly at 353.6m.

A view of St Magnus the Martyr, a fine church builr by Sir Christopher wren and his most expensive. It used to be aligned with the original approach to London Bridge with traffic passing under the clock and pedestrians walking through the arch. The current bridge was built alongside previous alignments and opened to traffic in 1973 so the old approaches are now just a quiet backwater.

The Monument which marks the place where Farriner's bakery was located whose oven's started the fire of London in 1666.

A Victorian Gothic building on the corner of Philpot Lane...

...and a detail of plaster work of two mice eating some cheese.

A couple of photos of Leadenhall Market, which has also appeared in Laura Croft, Tomb Raider and Diagonal Alley in Harry Potter.

The Duke of Wellington outside the Bank of England

The entrance to Chinatown just off Leicester Square.

A couple of photos of Buckingham Palace.

I also took in the Science Museum and given the number of photos that I took of VW beetles in Central and Southern America, I couldn't let this one escape which was on show in the central foyer.

And this was a new destination for me, the Victorian Gothic inner courtyard of the V&A which for some reason I have never been to before. It is a wonderful piece of architecture to see as much as the contents are well worth a visit.