England: London 15 years Later

As I said in yesterday's post, I went home with Soul Twin so that I could spend a day with her.  She and I met over 15 years ago in our training to move overseas.  I moved to Portugal and she moved to London.  I went to visit her in May 2000, which was my second time to the UK, but my first time to London.  Just for fun, here's a photo from that trip:

When I think of London, I think of her.  I've been to see her there three times before this trip.  This time, we only had a day...but what a gorgeous day it ended up being!!!  We walked by Saint Paul's.

I appreciated the helpful tips of which way to look when crossing the road:

I wanted to see the WWI commemoration poppies at the Tower of London.  The moat is filled with ceramic poppies: one for each British military fatality during the first World War.  It's a sobering yet beautiful sight to see.  

They were still putting them in when we went.  The last one was supposed to placed on November 11th.  The crowds were insane that day, and even made the news.  But I'm glad I went and saw it.

We went across the Tower Bridge to get some pretty day photos of it.  I mean, seriously, what an unbelievably gorgeous day!!!

We had fun taking reflection photos in Soul Twin's sunglasses.

The Tower from across the Thames.

Then we headed off to the Black Friar's Pub, which is decorated in Art Nouveau.  Soul Twin knew I would love it, and she was right!  First of all, look how awesomingly skinny the building is!

Afterwards, we went back to her neighborhood so that I could go to a grocery store and buy some things one can't get in France (like yummy porridge, for example).  On the way there, we saw this great spider web:

I trembled to think of going over a "weak bridge."  Glad to see at least that they closed the road leading up to it!

I know this is not the normal English red phone booth that tourists take photos of.  However, I'd spotted one of these several times around the country and thought, "This is the new 'phone' booth."  Interesting, isn't it?  That we barely have need of pay phones anymore, but now, we might need a wi-fi booth?

The sunset was lovely for my last night in London.  We had dinner with Soul Twin's husband, and then watched the first Harry Potter movie, just to take in the movie sets we'd wandered around in the day before.

It was fun to be back in London with her.  The last time we'd been there together was spring of 2002. And while I hadn't originally planned on going into downtown London at all, I'm so glad we ended up going...seeing the Poppies and the Tower Bridge on such a gorgeous day was good for my heart.