When you live in or near a big city like London, I think it’s easy to take it for granted – you are familiar with all the famous locations and facilities like theatres, art galleries and museums, so you don’t always appreciate them.
But when you spend a day just waling around London with a visitor from out of town – like my friend and fellow photographer Randy Kepple, who is from Vancouver, Washington state in the USA – you see the city through their eyes – and it becomes new and amazing again.
So that’s what I was doing on Sunday – Randy and I met at his hotel in the morning and then spent the day walking around visiting the “usual tourist places” – Trafalgar Square, The Mall, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Tower Bridge, and St. Pauls – and of course taking some pictures!
It was a lot of fun – and it reminded me just how much to see there is in London; one day was not enough even to scratch the surface. I had to dig deep into what I could remember from history lessons at school to answer Randy’s questions about the places we visited – and I have to confess to checking a few facts on Wikipedia via my iPhone from time to time. And I found that as a “local” I was often being asked for information or directions by tourists!
Despite a cool breeze from the east, it was a beautiful sunny day which made it a pleasure to just stroll around – although it was quite crowded in some areas thanks to it being a Bank Holiday weekend and in the aftermath of the Royal Wedding last Friday.
Anyway, enough chat from me – here are a few of my photographs from the day… as always, click any thumbnail to open a larger version in a pop-up window:
