London Air

Despite my annoying tendency to go on and on about how great London is, I really haven’t been out to do much sightseeing since I’ve been here. I decided to remedy that this past Sunday and actually go out and see some of those great London sights.

I decided to walk along the south bank of the Thames where I haven’t spent much, or really any time. I started out by the Tower of London which I always find incredible impressive no matter how many times I’ve seen it. I then walked across Tower Bridge which is the really cool Bridge that everyone always thinks is London Bridge because that is the bridge they always show in movies. It was a painfully chilly day and the wind on the bridge was both painful and exhilarating. I stood at the center of the bridge and let it rush through me, whipping my hair around, for as long as I could stand it.

I crossed to the South-bank and walked along, stopping at the Tate Modern, a truly excellent museum, to check out the giant crack in the floor and to meander around and warm up.

Awhile ago I talked about my Great London Novel Pr oject, and despite the tumultuousness of the past couple or weeks I have been sticking to it! I was really glad I had when I sat down at a cafe for lunch and read Ann Veronica’s first impressions on fleeing to London to start a new life:

“...she walked out into London with a peculiar exaltation that partook of panic and defiance but was chiefly a sense of vast unexampled release.
She inhaled a deep breath of air- London air.”

How eerily appropriate. I continued to walk along the river, passing such exciting surprises as the South Bank Book Market and this awesome skate park with gorgeous graffiti. I finally walked back north across one of the Jubilee bridges, where I snapped these terrific shots of Parliament in the setting sun. It’s moments like this that just totally embody how pretty London can be.

“And this great mellow place, this London, now was hers, to struggle with, to go where she pleased in, to overcome and live in. ‘I am glad,’ she told herself, ‘I came.’”