My trip to London, part 3: commercial London

This will be my last post from London for a little while because I am headed off on a new adventure later today, but I'm sure I'll go back to London in the future.

After my walk along the Thames, I went to see the highlights of capitalist London. So far I have focused on taking pictures of myself in front of old buildings, but London is also a very modern city and one of the centers of the global economy.

My trip to London, part 2: an evening walk along the Thames

Here is my second post about my trip to London. After I left St Paul's Cathedral, I went for a long walk along the River Thames. Readers of my blog who know a lot about English geography will know that the Thames is the same river that flows through Oxford. In London, it is crossed by many bridges.

Here is a picture of me on the south side of the Thames looking back at St Paul's Cathedral. Behind me is the Millennium Bridge, a footbridge that was first opened in 2000. (Those of you are Harry Potter fans and enjoyed my pictures of Christ Church dining hall might recognize Millennium Bridge from the opening scenes of the film version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, in which it was torn down)

My trip to London, part 1: St Paul's Cathedral

I recently traveled to London and walked all around the city. I'm going to share my photos from London with you in three parts, starting with a post about St Paul's Cathedral.

St Paul's is the main cathedral in London, right in the center of the city. It was built after the Great Fire of London destroyed the previous cathedral in 1666. The huge new cathedral took until 1708 to finish building. It was designed by a famous architect named Christopher Wren, who had to work very hard to support such a big dome so that it would stand up. The dome is so perfectly round on the inside that two people who stand at exactly the right places on opposite sides of it can hear each other whisper. Wren designed a lot of other great buildings, but St Paul's was his masterpiece. When he died, he was buried in the crypt of the cathedral with the epitaph "If you seek his monument - look around you."

Here are some pictures of me outside the cathedral:

Snow in Oxford

It snowed in Oxford today! I think the snow makes the old stone colleges look even more beautiful. Here are some pictures of me out for a walk in the snow.

--Benny

I Got Closer to the Deer

The deer were standing closer to the fence one day, so I snuck up close to them. Unfortunately, deer have evolved to be afraid of bears, so they all ran away and stood under a tree. These were the best pictures of them that I could get.

--Benny

My dinner in Christ Church

Well, I'm still in Oxford. But even though I haven't been traveling, I have been having some adventures. Last night, I had dinner in Christ Church. Christ Church is one of Oxford's colleges. It is also the site of Oxford's cathedral. I went to a formal dinner in the dining hall there, which is where I had my friends take these pictures. I know it's dark, but those of you who have been to the movies recently might recognize Christ Church dining hall -- the Hogwarts Great Hall scenes from all eight Harry Potter movies were filmed there. Obviously, the actual dining hall doesn't have a ceiling that reflects the weather outside, so there was a lot of CGI. But perhaps you can still see the resemblance!