You must be somewhere in London, you must be loving your life in the rain...

So after spending the first six hours of my birthday in Porto airport, and the next hour or so on a plane, I arrived in London, to be pestered in some detail about what I'd been up to for the previous 15 months. I was finally let in to the UK with a warning to have an address and a ticket to leave next time I wanted to come in.

I caught a bus to central London and dropped my pack at the hotel my friend, Freddie, worked at, and went for a walk along the Thames.

Shakespeare's Globe!

So many bridges...

Totally had no idea before that this one was blue.

"Through the patriotic zeal of.. this obelisk was brought from Alexandria..." I suppose pillaging everything you find could be considered patriotism.

The day after I arrived Freddie and I went and saw Chelsea play Arsenal at Wembley, which was quite the spectacle. Rugby matches ain't got shit on the passion at football games...

The next day we went to the British Museum, the second great collection of stolen treasures I'd seen so far, after the Louvre. The sizes of these places still boggle the mind, and the diversity of their contents is impressive, to say the least.

This thing was like 6 or 7 photos long, but the series I took wasn't terrific, and I dunno how to stitch them together anyway, or if my computer'd be up to the challenge.

Three of many sarcophogi in the area.

If only it were in a bottle.

"Seals can be forged by anyone with a turnip and a knife," or some such - Thom Merrilin

The (back of the) Rosetta Stone!

Captain Cook's tiki.

Not sure what these guys were.

I then spent a few weeks catching up with friends and checking out a bunch of London's museums, but mostly just hanging out at Freddie's, or on his riverboat (those things are so cool, everyone that lives in London should get one, having a floating flat is much better than a car). It's nice to relax a bit every now and then :D

The next stop, though, was the Silverstone Circuit, to watch the MotoGP. I'd never even seen part of a MotoGP race, but it was quite thrilling. Although you can obviously only see the bikes whizz past for half a second each lap. Rather difficult to take photos, and the noise is absolutely ferocious.

Fred's brother has a rather massive bulldog, who's basically a big baby. His owner hates Chelsea, so we decided to dress him up one day.

The next museum I went to was the Natural History Museum, which I'd heard quite a lot about. It was neat!

Dinosaurs be big.

This was also a whole lot bigger than it looks...

I believe this was some sort of rodent, but it was much bigger than a person.

"Extinct Mammal" that looks like a colossal sloth.

Petrified wood, the consistency of solid rock.

Outside of the Natural History Museum, on a nice cloudy day.

The same day I visited the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was just as impressive as the British Museum.

Their woodworking left a little to be desired though.

Ruby-encrusted Japanese spoon.

I believe this was an ivory miso spoon.

This thing was surrounded by people looking for buildings they knew. 

Memorial commissioned by Victoria upon the death of her husband, Albert. Wiki says it cost the equivalent of 10,000,000...

The only thing I saw in the Tate Modern that I thought was interesting enough to photograph. Modern art...

One weekend I went to Bristol to catch up with a couple of friends back home. Bristol was a nice change from the ridiculously massive and expensive London, though obviously there's not so much to do there. Walking around the central city and next to the river was nice though, lots of people out on their boats for the sunny weekend we were blessed with. Also, Banksy was born in Bristol, so there was loads of cool street art everywhere, though apparently anything that gets confirmed to be his gets torn off and sold...

Cyanide and Happiness.

Mad Max hog.

Apparently this was originally a sentry tower. It's hard to believe they would've seen anything coming, given how the city sprawls around it these days:

One night we went for a walk along the river to see the Bristol-famous bridge (at least, the 3 or so Bristolians we spoke to said it was about all there is to see in Bristol, and supposedly it gets lit up nice at night. Wasn't so terrific, but it was a nice walk.

Typical English street, though the ones in London almost never have enough space for 2 cars to pass each other between the parked ones.

Poor old lock.

One day Carl and I went to what seemed to be the Bristol history museum, and spent most of our time looking at the huge paintings of crowded scenes, trying to see the weirdos.

There was also a book bound in human skin. The book details the murder case which the skin's former owner perpetrated. 

Towards the end of my stay I decided I'd shell out the ludicrous sum of money charged to see Buckingham Palace's state rooms. After a walk through the park across the road I discovered they'd been closed for a couple of months until they reopened for their "winter opening hours." Lame-o.

The park had a pretty fancy gate though. 

Rule Britannia!

srsly why do palaces need so many rooms?

The London Eye from near to the Palace.

<3 ivy.

This bad boy was gifted to Britain by the Spanish Navy, in thanks for the Duke of Wellington's lifting of the siege of Cadiz.

I can't remember what the name of the building this fellow had to stand outside. Something like the "Horse Palace." I'll just call him a member of the Pony Guard.

Another member of the Pony Guard atop his valiant pony, just after the changing of the ponies.

Since I was snubbed by the Queen (doesn't she want her loyal antipodean vassals to visit?), I wandered over to Trafalgar Square to visit the National Gallery.

Trafalgar Square.

Anyone that goes in these awesome old buildings without checking out all the ceilings is foolish.

Baby's got a crown as big as he is.

On one of my final days in England, I went on a trip to Oxford, mostly just to find Lyra and Will's bench. Why not?

Central Oxford is an amazing collection of ancient buildings making a rather confusing maze of streets and alleyways. Studying there would be fucking cool, though dodging thousands of tourists as you rush between classes would be less than ideal.

The bench is in the Botanical Gardens, so I thought I'd better get my 5 pounds' worth and check out the rest of it while I was there.

Delicious monster didn't look so monstrous.

Probably the only decent batch of flowers that were in bloom during my springtime visit.

Sadly they'd blocked off the paths next to the bench with another bench and a lawnmower, making this about the best angle for a photo that didn't just look silly. Was nice to sit there a minute though.

Not sure why people would've carved their names in the thing a couple of dozen times, but apparently they did.

Then it was time for a wander round more of Oxford, before sitting in a park and reading til my bus left.

Also I stumbled upon the Natural History Museum here, and decided to take a peek.

To be honest I think this one was just as impressive as the one in London, though much much smaller.

Huge skull, you wouldn't wanna fuck with these guys.

A moa!

Snake skeletons are super fucking creepy.

Elephants look weird with no tusks (or flesh, or skin...)

Don't mess with gorillas either, your head fits in their hand.

The bones of their children look like the bones of our children, though.

Out the back of the Natural History Museum was the Pitt Rivers Museum, a hugely dense display of anthropological and archaeological artifacts. I liked how everything was arranged by purpose, rather than origin. So instead of there being a case of, say, Egyptian stuff, there'd be a case of knives, with a couple hundred knives from different parts of the world and eras of history displayed together.

After all that, and a bunch of doing basically nothing, I finally decided I needed to get out of London, and booked a flight to Gdynia, in the north of Poland, to spend a few days with another friend from back home. Next post, obviously!