Zooterville Travelblog
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  • 2006
    • April
      • Our Hotel - the Commodore
        04/29/2006
      • The Spire
        04/29/2006


        Heres a view of a very cool building, just outside the entrance of our hotel. It's called the spire house, and is the ruins of a church, wrapped by a modern building, for a great set of condos. how cool would it be to live inside the ruins of a 300 year old church in a great neigh

      • Flowers In the Park
        04/29/2006
      • Flowers in the Park
        04/29/2006
      • St. Pauls Cathedral
        04/29/2006


        Here's an outside view of perhaps one of the most spectacular buildings in the world. To think that Christopher Wren cranked this out without computers or modern construction equipment is crazy, but he sure did a great job. Here are a few photos, but they really don't reflect

      • St. Pauls Altar
        04/29/2006
      • St. Pauls Dome
        04/29/2006


        Ok, this doesn't even kind of do this justice. this dome is amazing and beautiful - we even hiked up 500 some odd stairs to get a closer look. Painted in a black and white motif in keeping with the lower half of the church and as not to take away from the altar. the blue dot actua

      • View from the top
        04/29/2006
      • St. Pauls Crypt - Lord Nelson's toomb
        04/29/2006


        So underneith this amazing church is a crypt, with lots of dead people and loads of statues and monuments to various war heros and other nobles. Here's the quite large toomb of Lord Nelson. I think he was the guy on I dream of Genie. Every square inch of this place was layered wit

      • St. Pauls at Night
        04/29/2006
      • Statue of Movement or Motion
        04/29/2006
      • Kensington
        04/29/2006


        I kind of like this photo, it looks kind of haunted. This is of Kensington Palace, and I think the statue is of Queen Victoria - who built a smashing monument to her dead husband Albert below.

        Kensington Palace didn't allow us to take any photos inside, so I'll

      • Kensington Garden
        04/29/2006
      • Kensington Palace
        04/29/2006
      • Princess Diana Memorial Drainage Ditch
        04/29/2006


        In just a day of touring around London, it was quite obvious that Londoners like to pay homage to their dead heros and leaders by constructing great monuments - see Prince Albert's below - Every great church is layerd with magnificent sculptures to war heros and other leaders that

      • Prince Albert's Memorial
        04/29/2006


        You know, there is no question that this guy was loved. This is a monument to Prince Albert in the back side of Hyde Park. It's huge and has amazing detail. It pretty much trumps any other monument in the city, as far as monuments go. It's amazingly ornate but has fantastic d

      • Prince Albert Memorial
        04/29/2006
      • Travels - Day 3
        04/28/2006
        Ok now that really sucked. i just wrote this long thing about or trip, with colorful detail and such - then the computer dropped it. So I'm starting over, but will be much more brief.

        We're having a great time. Spending much of it just wandering around london. have stumbled i

      • Day 1 -- The Tower Of London
        04/27/2006
        So our first real tourist stop was the Tower of London. Kind of misleading name, it's only about 3 stories tall, but it's a series of several castles, walls, motes and towers that served as everything a royal residence, and a place to store the crown jewels to a high profile prison and tor

      • Londond University Hazing
        04/27/2006
        While we were touring the tower, we came upon what looked like a hazing incident. This poor kid - and he looked about 14 - had to stand perfectly still wearing this funny hat. I'm guessing he's trying to get into a really top fraternity to go through this. Every once in a while he would sw

      • White Castle
        04/27/2006


        Hers a view of the White Castle - the first of several castles in the Tower of London - built right in the center. Cranked out sometime around 1066 by Bill 1 - also known as William the Conqueror - this building was the real center of the start of Britain. After kicking the crap out of

      • Baby Armor
        04/27/2006
        Ok, I had to get a picture of this. They had lots of cool armor on display. But this one really stood out. Check out the toddler armor. Is that cool or what? How fun would that be to take your little brother or sister, strap them into baby armor and start knocing them around with a stick? Other than

      • Off with their Heads!
        04/27/2006
        Here's Carmen admiring a collection of just a few representative heads that were chopped off at Tower Hill across the street. Apparently in what is now a very nice park, they used to hold public executions - of generally very famous and sometimes royal people. You would get last words, then pla

      • The Rack
        04/27/2006
        In the dungeon of one of the bildings was the torture chamber. Yea, a real honest-to-goodness torture chamber - with some "insturments of persuasion" placed about. Here's a real working version of "the rack" which they say is quite painful. They were very up front in saying

      • Beefeater
        04/27/2006

        Everyone recognizes this guy from the Gin bottle - where he's usually in his dress reds. He's a Yeoman guard otherwise known as a beefeater. The letters on his chest refer to the current king or queen. In this case it's Elizabeth the II - the R is Latin for Kind And Queen (Rex

      • Cool Weapons
        04/27/2006
      • On the Thone
        04/27/2006
      • Tower bridge
        04/27/2006
      • The London Eye
        04/27/2006
      • London Eye Pod
        04/27/2006
      • London Eye 3
        04/27/2006
      • Big Ben and Parlement
        04/27/2006
      • Travel Reference Sties
        04/22/2006
        Great Travel References...
        Here is a collection of some of the web sites that have been most helpful during or rapid travel planning.

        <a href="http://www.planetware.com/attractions/united-kingdom-gb.htm"><b>Planet Wave </b> </a><i>An excell

      • Tour Travel Pass
        04/22/2006
        Links to the websites with details on the particular travel passes, costs and what is included.


        <a href="http://www.gbheritagepass.com/" target="_blank">British Heritage Pass</a> - <i>Take a journey through nearly 600 Attractions in Britain

      • Love Hurtz
        04/20/2006
        Had a bit of a challenge today. I guess that's what happens when you are trying to plan a 10 day trip 5 days from your departure date. The challenge was with the itinerary. Specifically, getting around. We've got a pretty good lock on the destinations that we want to visit, but we were a b

      • Changing Directions
        04/18/2006


        So this morning we made a breakthrough in the planning of our trip. And it's all thanks to travel guru Rick Steves, actually. For some reason our initial plan was to travel around Britan in a clockwise direction from London - Dover - Rye - Brighton - Bath -The Cotswols - Wales - Y

      • Stonehenge
        04/17/2006
      • Now What
        04/17/2006