Kensington Gardens

Alright- so here's the deal.  We have this London Walks class here, where we have to go on all these walks around London.  It's pretty cool- except when it's freezing, and you have to go on these walks that are sometimes hours long.  But it's a really good way to get a feel for the city- and I like seeing all that there is to see!  One of these walks had to be done on our own, so I did this one today- in Kensington Gardens which is actually literally like 30 seconds away from where I live.

Kensington Gardens is (obviously) where Kensington Palace is-- and for those of you that aren't up on your royal celeb gossip-- this is where Will and Kate will be living in a few months!!  (They have to finish rennovating it first...) but this is the Palace:

So yeah- that's pretty cool!  Maybe I'll get a little glimpse of them before I leave London :)  But, surrounding the Palace is this huge park: Kensington Gardens.  And I kind of fell in love with it.  It was actually nice being forced to be alone- because this way I was able to stop and look at what I wanted to, skip past the stuff that wasn't interesting, just sit on a bench and people watch, and just soak in London.

These are some of the things I discovered on my little walk:

This is Prince Albert's Memorial.  If you have not seen the movie "The Young Victoria" you need to go watch it right now.  It SUCH a good movie, and then you'll know who Prince Albert is; he's great. :) There are four corners to the memorial and each one represents a different hemisphere.  This is the one for America.  Being in England has made me realize how much I love America and how grateful I am to live there- so this part of the memorial really touched me.  (How's that for cheesy?)  Let's just say that I had never been so happy to see a statue of a buffalo in my entire life :)

Then, you come to this pretty little place called ... uh... I forgot- Serpent something or other?  Dang, sorry.  But it's named that because of the shape.  But I just thought those swans were super huge and pretty so I wanted to take a picture :)  And the pond with the trees reminded me of Minnesota :)

And there are these lovely Italian Fountains.  I sat here for a while... it was so pretty.  And yeah, there's really not much to say about these fountains besides the fact that they are beautiful-- my photography skills don't really do it justice, unfortunately.




Isn't this sick?  If I had gotten a picture from the front, you would get the effect better, but the guy saw me trying to creep a picture from the front, so I got this lovely shot after I passed him... But you get the idea.  Flocks of pigeons...

So there are pigeons and big fat squirrels all over the place in the park.  And they're nasty.  Well, especially the pigeons.  I'm a little bit afraid of them because a) they're not afraid of you and b) my mother is afraid of birds, and so this fear has been somewhat instilled with me... ok not really too much-- but just when these pigeons fly straight at you.  It's gross.  Oh, and people like to feed these pigeons and squirrels so they always come up to you looking for food. So-- these two fat squirrels come up to me as I'm walking along and corner me in the middle of the path.  I'm a little bit scared because I'm by myself and these two huge squirrels, that probably have rabies, are surrounding me.  I stop and wait to see if they'll leave, but, they don't-- they just STARE at me.  It was sick. Sick sick sick.  So then I take a step forward to get away from them (I was afraid they were going to attack my leg as I did this) and.... then they left.

Ok. So my story was really anti-climatic (per-usual).  But I was seriously freaked out for a minute there.  Luckily I didn't die.  Count your blessings people....

:)