The streets of London

For this time, I put together some images which I could not really fit into any specific topics of the previous weeks. So some of these were taken back in March, although the majority is already from April. They are the results of the small walks I had around Elephant and Castle when I had some time. I think they do not need any further explanations, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask!
/I know, I showed you several squirrels before, but I still get surprised when I meet one, on my way to the uni, and I just have to take a picture of them./

London by night - Tower Bridge

On 19th March, there was the biggest full Moon in 18 years. I decided to go and take some pictures about the so called "Supermoon". So before sunset, I had a walk to the River Thames, as I hoped to find a good spot there. Its closest point to my home is at Tower Bridge, which seemed to be a good environment enough for the Moon.
While waiting for the Moon's appearance I took some trials about the bridge and the Tower, this is one of them:



When the Moon turned up on the horizon, it looked quite big and unusual indeed. However, after it moved to a better place regarding the composition of the photo, its look was just regular. The Moon shooting was not successful, but I thought I upload the pictures at least becasue of the Tower Bridge.


(note the "big" Moon on the right bottom corner)

Richmond Park

A few weeks have passed again without any posts. School kept me quite busy, and eventhough I had the chance to take some pictures occasionally, I had no time to upload any of them. So now I have several photos I took during the last few weeks, and will start uploading those which I took the latest.

Last Thursday we had such a nice weather, that me and one of my groupmates, Wenwei, decided to go for a small phototrip to Richmond Park. She had been there several times already, and she has become quite fond of it, so I thought it worths a visit.

The park is the largest of the Royal Parks in London. It gives home for a diverse wildlife, including red and fallow deer, woodpeckers, squirrels, rabbits, Rose-ringed parakeets, stag beetles and many other insects plus numerous ancient trees and varieties of fungi. ^[1].









The sky with the clouds and the contrails that all those airplanes have made (as the park is relatively close to the Heathrow airport) looked really special together with the still bald trees but already green grass.

Here is an image of a Black goose (at least a part of it), which does not tell too much about the park, and to tell to truth it is an accidental result, but somehow I really like how it turned out. Are there any souls out there who also find this picture interesting or is it just me?

London by night

When you hear 'London by night', probably you would expect more than just these few pictures presented here. I am sure there is going to be much more later on, so lets consider this to be the first part of the 'London by night' series.
So here you can see actually a picture from China Town. Although I am not really satisfied with the result, but I have uploaded it, as I think it still reflects its atmosphere quite well.


And just one more shot (taken at the National Gallery) which I felt interesting enough to upload here.
So well, this post happened to be relatively short, basically because I could not have those walks which I have planned, for several reasons.
I hope next time I will be able to present more pictures to you.

The Year of the Golden Rabbit

It has started almost a month ago already (on 3rd February), and was also celebrated on Trafalgar Square on the following weekend. When I first heard about it, I was quite surprised that it is held here in London as well. Although if we consider London´s connection with China and the number of the Chinese population in the capital (which is over 100,000^[1]), it becomes more understandable.
The attendance was high, and it seemed people from other ethnic groups were just as curious as I was, and enjoyed this little piece of Chinese culture brought over here on that day.



According to Chinese tradition, the Rabbit brings a year in which you can catch your breath and calm your nerves. To gain the greatest benefits from this time, focus on home, family, security, diplomacy, and your relationships with women and children. Make it a goal to create a safe, peaceful lifestyle, so you will be able to calmly deal with any problem that may arise.^[2]


Unfortunately I did not have enough free time exploring the city in the last few weeks, and take new pictures, so I thought I will post these images I had at least, as I have promised earlier to upload them. Hopefully next week I will come with some freshly taken pictures as I´m planning to have some photo walks.

Just the usual, London

Being busy with school project, does not help me exploring the city. And even if I decided to visit some "unknown" areas, I just tend to be held up by the usual things. Today we had such a surprisingly sunny weather, I just could not stay sitting at my desk, so I opened up London´s sity map, and I pointed at Regent´s Park.
On the way, I came across the famous big wheel, the London Eye (or EDF Energy London Eye, how it´s called recently), and guess what has happened. I stayed there till dark.















I could not miss taking some photos from good old Big Ben with the Parliament in sunset, and some lampions which has been left there from last week´s Chinese New Year celebration (maybe I´ll post some pictures from that event next time).

























And some more clichés I wanted to add earlier. Well, there´s nothing to tell about the Tower Bridge, unlike that phone booth on the left. It´s actually situated on my way to school, close to my house. It gives an essence of the area ;)



And I will close this post with some interesting buildings I see almost every day. I thought I will finish writing earlier, but at half time I went to the kitchen making a coffee, when I had to face the fact that a mouse is enjoying my things in the larder cupboard. So as a break, it took some time to clean up the mess my new little friend has made. London has a surprise for me for every day. Cheers!

Moving, moving and moving...

Where should I start? Well, first of all, last week I got some requests from my dear readers to update the blog more frequently than I used to. So I will try to do my best. I´m therefore planning a weekly update, so stay tuned ;)
This week I could finally move in to my permanent housing, close to the college, in the Elephant and Castle district. The area is a bit different or "diverse", to say it gently. But I will probably tell about that at another time.

What I wanted to talk about this time is the continuous rush of people. They just cannot stop. Everybody is busy with something, they are all the time running, late from somewhere. Ok, maybe it cannot be said generally, but you can definitely have the impression of that.
I wanted to capture some movements, so I went up to the 13th floor - to be lucky with taking pictures ;) - of my school. Here are some of them: