England!

Okay, Paris can wait...I was in England for 9 days most recently, and it was a blast!

We arrived first in London. It's a great town, lots of character I found. (Of course, I could possibily have found it to have more character because I can understand the language more easily...but either way. This is a picture of Charing Cross Station, taken from the base of the London Eye across the Thames.

After a couple of days in London we went on to Southampton, where we stayed at a friend's place and ventured out on day trips to various places. First stop was Salisbury -- the whole Stonehenge thing, and an obligatory picture of course.

Bath is another ridiculously nice place -- full of 'older' history, more to the Roman times and such. The thermal baths are really quite something, and at the end they let you sample some spring water (treated and everything of course). Warm and tasting like iron, it definitely wasn't too appetizing...but very cool.

After a day at Oxford, we spent the last day outside of London going to Portsmouth, an old Royal Navy port town and home of the Naval History Museum and things like that. Most interesting were the two ships, HMS Victory, Lord Nelson's ship, and Warriorthe first ironclad. This is a shot of the Victory...truly impressive!

We still had stuff to do in London before flying back to Germany -- We caught the Natural History museum, which was really interesting and fun. Only thing I regret is not spending enough time there, we were rushed for the schedule so we had to hurry through a lot of stuff, especially the inorganic Earth Science stuff, which interested me a mite more than the bio stuff that we tackled first. This is a shot of the main hall, bathed in midday light. I just really liked how this picture turned out...

All in all, it was a great trip and an awesome way to end the summer. Though by no means is the travelling over; I've still got a ton of places to go!