This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my travels. This full post can be found here.

Another eventful day is over. 20,000 steps in nice spring weather. Not completely blue sky, and not very warm, but it wasn’t cold either. It was a nice spring day. Today was all about walking along the South Bank by the river Thames. We saw a lot of landmarks and I discovered an amazing feature on my phone, the ability to take panorama photos. I’ve had so much fun with my new Nexus 5 today!

So, we live pretty much next to the Channel Four house. And we walked across the river and walked on the south bank all the way down to Shakespeare’s Globe. On the way we saw the Parliament, London Eye, Gabriel’s Wharf, the Millenium Bridge (the one who gets destroyed in the beginning of one of the later Harry Potter movies, Tate Modern Museum and Shakespeare’s Globe.

The Parliament is a very cool and old and big building. Big Ben is part of it. The London Eye is the big ferris wheel for the ones who didn’t know that. Too expensive to go up in it, but it was still cool to see ut from the ground. We had to take a break at Gabriel’s Wharf where we sat down for a while. It is exhausting walking around. It was a cute little square with food shops and handicraft shops. We didn’t go in to the Tate Modern Museum, art museums are really boring. But we were there and took pictures of the building from the outside. Our last stop on the South Bank was the Shakespeare Globe. We went on a tour and it was actually interesting and fun. The tour guide was funny.

We walked across the Millenium Bridge and saw Paul’s Cathedral, which is a very famous cathedral, but I have no idea why. At the info center we bought London passes for tomorrow so we have free entrance to a lot of stuff. And then took the subway to Chinatown to eat dinner. We took the first chinese restaurant we saw, and it was a nice one with good food. I made the mistake of ordering Pad Thai, when I could have taken sweet and sour chicken, which tasted way better. It was still good though.

We then took a tiny two minute walk to Soho and I have to say that I was surprised. I don’t know much about London, but I thought Soho was supposed to be a nice area, but no. Not where we went anyway. Strip clubs, sex stores and gay bars. It was weird. So we went straight to Picadilly Circus instead. That was a cool place. And that’s where I tried to take a 360 degree picture of the square. It actually turned out awesome!! In my phone I can use a tool to watch it in 3d or how to call it. But in my computer it is just a very wide photo which you can’t really see should be connected in the ends. It is still a very cool feature though and I took a lot of photos with just a tiny bit of panorama.

At Picadilly Circus we went into a sport store and then walked through St. James’ Park back home. The park was beautiful with lots of ducks and squirrels. One of them actually came up and touched my hand because he thought I had food for him.

Back home my plan was to study some, but something came in the way. I saw on Facebook that Carlsbad, where I lived just four months ago, is burning really bad! I have been watching live streamings from it and it is scary to see what is happening to my second hometown. Fortunately it’s not quite where my host family lives, but it is very very close, about ~1 mile / 1.7km away. I don’t know if they are evacuated, but the news says that no ones been hurt so I think they are okay. But it is still scary and I hope the fires burns out when the sun goes down like the fire department over there says. A few houses have been completely destroyed and about 30 damaged so far (when I am writing this the fire has been going on for about five hours in Carlsbad). Yesterday one of my close friends south of me in San Diego was evacuated. Stupid California where it doesn’t rain! This is apparently very unusual though. I don’t remember what they said about the Santa Ana wind and the time of the year, but this doesn’t happen very often.

I am glad this didn’t happen while I was there, that would have been terrifying, and I would have been really scared… I hope my hostkids are fine!

It seems like the wind is blowing to the west, so they should be fine.

Like I said, an eventful day. And the next few days will be too (hopefully no fires!!). Tomorrow we are going to Westminster Abbey, a boat tour on the river Thames, Tower of London, Tower Bridge and then some shopping at M&M World among other things. On Friday we are going to Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace and Hard Rock Cafe. And after that I am not sure. It will be fun though and I look forward to seeing more parts of London!

 The panorama feature works perfect!
London Eye Me, Helena and Gudrun in front of the Parliament. Millenium Bridge with St. Paul’s Cathedral in the background. Shakespeare’s Globe. Chinatown in London. 360 degree photo of Picadilly Circus.  A squirrel in St. James’ Park eating from my hand. And here is another one of the hundreds in the park, posing on a fence. St. James’ Park. These policemen were escorting some important people. I wonder who.Even if the buildings in London are pretty modern, they pubs still look the same. Almost all of them actually look like this. This is what I see when I think of England. A cute street.