Poppies and London Round Two

Today we wandered into London for the day! We went with our friends, Josh and Bekka on the tube. Last time we took the train, this time we drove an hour to a tube station and took the tube in. Lee and I decided that we prefer the train much more, it is much more relaxing and has a lot less people. The tube is not our favorite.

Anyways, we headed to the Tower of London first to see the poppies. It is a huge temporary art installation named "Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red." It marks 100 years since Britain's first full day involved in WWI. There were 888, 246 ceramic poppies placed on the tower grounds. Every poppy represents a British fatality during WWI. It is an extremely powerful image of the magnitude of the war. I am so glad Bekka and Josh invited us along this weekend or else we would not have been able to see this installation.

 

Bekka and Josh then went into the tower, since this was Bekka's first time to london. Lee and I headed over to Tower Bridge to take some pictures. We brought out the big boys. We just got a new piece of camera equipment called Lee Big Stopper (no relation ;) ). It creates the effects you see in pictures where the water is smooth as glass, cars are light streaks and the clouds are streaked. In other words, it's awesome!

It was our first time trying it out so we have a lot to learn but I'd say that it still turned out pretty good! Hopefully, weather permitting, we will be heading to a beach soon to practice more!

Next, we headed up to Parliment/Big Ben. I am still in love with them!

After spending time in that area, seeing more sites like Westminster, we headed to Buckingham Palace and had a wonderful walk through St. James Park. It's a beautiful area.