Exercise Day!

Today was exercise day! I’m joking. Well, sort of. Today we meandered through Regent's Park, up to Primrose Hill, and then over to the Abbey Road Zebra Crossing. Yes, all my Beatles fan friends, we visited that zebra crossing. Personally, I was more impressed with the park gardens than the zebra crossing. For the first time since I’ve been in London, with the exception of my Kingston trip, I saw a larger range of animals besides pigeons. We saw squirrels, and ducks, swans, some sort of small waterfowl that was all black with white on the front of it’s face (it made a high pitched peeping noise), a variety of songbirds, and lots and lots of bees (honey bees and bumblebees). I also managed to take my first truly iconic photo of the trip: an elderly gentleman reading a newspaper on a park bench. I couldn't decide if I preferred the color or the monochromatic, so I'm displaying both here.

Lilies are my favorite flower, so I took picture of every lily I could find. Unfortunately, all the lilies I saw were in the section of the garden where red and yellow are the most prominent colors.

 

I was excited about catching a pigeon drinking water that had fallen down into the ditch under a fountain. This is one of the rare moment where I've caught a pigeon doing something other than getting underfoot or roosting.

Pigeons really are annoying birds. This one decided to photo bomb my picture of Topper resting on the arm of a park bench. But I loved this woodcarving statue of a big cat stalking through the grass that I found a short distance from the park path. To bad it wasn't stalking a pigeon. That would have made a terrific picture.

And this is possible my favorite photo of the whole day. This statue is quite a mystery to me. There wasn't much description, just a title "The Lost Boy." It makes me think of the Lost Boys from Peter Pan and makes me all the more anxious for our trip to Kensington Gardens.

It felt nice to get away from the noise of the city and enjoy nature, even if it was a pruned and shaped and hose-watered nature. We ate lunch on Primrose Hill, in the shade of a large tree where we could look out over the cityscape, without being bombarded by the noise and crowds of the city life. Only at the end of the day were we reminded that we are in the middle of a huge city, as we attempted to get pictures while crossing the Abbey Road Zebra Crosswalk. I have told many people back home that Abbey Road is actually a very busy street, but to give you a full sense of just how busy it is, I took this picture of cars lined up at the crosswalk, waiting for tourist to finish crossing. The first one is taken from the side of the street where the Abbey Studios is located, the second one is taken across the street. Vehicles are lined up on both sides of the street. In Britain, you have to stop for people crossing at a zebra crossing, so it is illegal not to stop, but motorists honk their horns and inch forward in irritation, and throngs of people line either side of the street, hoping for an opportunity to recreate the Beatles crossing for themselves. It’s really a fairly dangerous intersection.