Hi Denver, I’m Back!

And, amazingly enough I’m on a fairly normal schedule! Wedding season is kicking into high gear starting tomorrow but I wanted to post some photos from the England vacation.

Possibly London’s most famous piece of architecture? I love Big Ben! (Btw, I know Big Ben is really the nickname for the bell inside, but Clock Tower doesn’t really roll off the tongue as nicely!)

Geoff with the Lions from Trafalgar Square

The Victoria & Albert Museum is fantastic. This was a piece of sculpture hanging from the ceiling when you walk through the front doors.

Took a train out to Hampton Court Palace. It was probably my favorite out of all of the castles/palaces we saw. Mainly because it had big beautiful gardens.

Oh, and because there are random dragon puppets lying about to play with!

I thought it would be so cool to get a shot through one of the keyholes in the palace. It looks so secretive right?

I took a train out to Birmingham as well to skate with the Birmingham Blitz roller derby team. They were so sweet to let me get a group shot with them:) (I’m in the 1st row, 2nd from the right)

While in Birminham we went into the Selfridges there. They have a huge bull. It’s made out of jelly beans!

See? (Did someone steal some jelly beans from this sculpture?)

Spent some time wandering around the Tower of London. Saw the Crown Jewels or as the beefeater called them “The Queen’s Bling.”

Apparently if the crows leave, the Tower of London will fall and so will all of England. I can’t believe I was able to get so close to this guy (I was using a wide angle lens!).

And now for a section I like to call: “The Tower Bridge is the prettiest site in London!”

This one was taken from our dinner Riverboat cruise down the Thames. I was afraid it would be rather cheesy and another tourist trap, but I really loved the river cruises.

Some more from the night time dinner cruise:

Me & Geoff attempting a self portrait. We have a lot of these that turned out really bad:)

How about a shot of the London Eye during the day?

Or one from above?

I am obsessed with derby. I had to get some practices in with the London Rollergirls too!

We spent a lot of time contemplating dead people. Both at Highgate Cemetery which is quite old and has been saved from destruction & at Westminster Abbey. They have tidied the cemetery up a bit, but not so much that the creepy atmosphere has been destroyed.

First a shot of the enormous Westminster Abbey:

Door to one of the crypts

I’m including this one from Hyde Park with Highgate’s pictures because I think it fits. This is probably my favorite photo from the whole trip!

Well, maybe this one is:) Isn’t he adorable? I was kind of missing taken photos of people so I made him sit for me for a minute. This one is in the Japanese garden in Holland Park.

Another from the same garden.

We saw this old man feeding squirrels straight from his hand. This little guy ran over to another bench and let me take this shot while he ate his prize.

I got a lot of shots of birds. This one is chilling in Hyde Park.

We had the most expensive tea ever at the Orangery. Good tea though. This is from the outside. I think this statue thinks it’s too expensive too.

Prince Albert’s Memorial. Cu-razy!

I liked the Indian inspired sculptures from his memorial.

We took a train out to Windsor Castle to check out the Queen’s digs. Room after room of nice paintings, armour, furniture, & gold gilt abounds, but I personally was more attracted to the awesome dollhouse. Windsor Castle also didn’t have as many gardens to explore so it wasn’t my favorite.

For our last day in London we combined our favorite stuff: Riverboats/Parks/Picnic/Reading/Sleeping
We took a cruise on down to Greenwich and napped/ate at the park and then walked up the huge hill to the Royal Observatory to see the view.

And to pretend to make fun of a fat tree:

For the week outside of London we started off by taking a train to Dover and picked up a car. I was suprised to find that it really wasn’t very hard at all to drive on the other side of the road.
We were a little castled/museumed out so we decided to just take a hike on the White Cliffs of Dover to the lighthouse. It was the first truly nice day and I even got a little sunburn.

We spent the night in Canterbury & checked out the Cathedral

The next day we stopped in Rye (quaint little old village) where we found this really cool penny arcade

This guy told me my fortune.

This machine was neat as you would spin the photos and a little picture movie would play. Don’t ask me what she’s doing

This one was the best. It was from about 1950 and the place where the girls are would spin and show some different girls.

Rye was so pretty. Flowers just grow out of the buildings there

We drove on to Brighton which was a really cool seaside city. We visited the palace there which was crazy. No photography allowed on the inside, but it was definitely the most ridiculously decorated place we’d seen by far!

We also stayed a day or so in the Cotswolds and explored a few different little villages there. I thought I’d get a neat shot of a village in the road mirror and right as I was doing it, a whole slew of vintage cars drove by and I was able to get most of them in my shots.

Last stop on the trip was Bath.

Look, they have non-red phone booths too! (This was the only one I saw though).

We spent some time exploring the Roman Baths

And we stopped by the Crescent and the Circle:

Taken from beneath the trees in the middle of the Circle

It was quite the vacation and now I feel very refreshed for the upcoming wedding season. Check back this week for our regularly scheduled programming:)