Hampton Court Palace, King's College, Trafalgar Square

Hello again, readers from here and home!

You'll be surprised to know that not too much has happened since my last entry. There is, however, plenty to talk about. I spent most of last week with my classmates and professor, checking out things in London and on an academic visit. Pics? Got 'em.

I checked out the changing of the guard. For attracting as many people as it does, it's not that exciting.

Make way!

This is a tiny slice of the crowd. There were thousands of people practically crawling on monuments, curbs, stairs, and gates.

She looks like I feel

We saw this lady...

...and this guy. We all think it was Gordon Brown. He arrived in a BMW 7 Series.

This is probably the best shot I took of the guards. There wasn't much to see.

The next trip we took brought us all the way out to Richmond upon Thames to Hampton Court Palace. We started from Waterloo Station, the one used in The Bourne Ultimatum.

He's breaking in!

We saw Kurt Wenner, a famous 3D street painter. He created an ad for an insurance company that apparently saved people an overflowing vault of money in 2007.

A factory?

We arrived at Hampton Court Palace after a nearly hour long train ride. I thought the front of the palace looked a lot like a factory. The inside was considerably nicer.

This is Fountain Court. They had a man mowing the lawn in a perfect baseball field checkerboard pattern. The wealthy used to hold socials on this lawn and there has been a fountain there for quite some time now.

This is clock court. On the right side is Henry VIII's great hall. There were about a dozen elaborate tapestries, easily 25 feet by 15 feet decorating the walls. Apparently, Henry could have financed, built, fully manned, armed, and supplied a warship for what he spent on the tapestries.
Crazy Brits and their tapestries.

One for the ladies...

These are the actual costumes worn by Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson in The Other Boleyn Girl.

We took a stroll

The gardens at the palace were gigantic. This might be one of my favorite pictures. Do me a favor and check out the larger version or, if you're patient, the really huge version that doesn't leave anything to the imagination.

Hey guys - where are we?

The last thing we checked out was the hedge maze. It's the oldest hedge maze in Great Britain, something they are very proud of.

The next day, we took a visit to Brunel University to hear some talks from their Computer Science grad students. Brunel's computer science department was housed in one of the older buildings on campus, but Brunel has recently undergone expansion and improvement, partially for the 2012 summer games in London. One of the grad students told us that the games were expected to need every available space for accommodations and training.

New residences

These were the newest residences on campus. The building on the left was one of their athletic facilities.

Look familiar?

I couldn't get past the fact that one of the most central buildings on Brunel's campus looked exactly like the central building on UMass Amherst's campus. Uncanny, no?

Our next visit was to King's College in London. I didn't know anything about King's College before visiting, but I found out that DNA was discovered there by Rosa Franklin. However, the ones that get all the credit for it are Watson and Crick. Rosa Franklin's work (a set of pictures taken using x-ray diffraction) was shown to Watson and Crick who, at the time, weren't that close to making the discovery. Rosa Franklin has a commemorative plaque affixed to the main building at King's College.

This is the main courtyard at King's College. The door on the left lead's to England's version of the IRS. Amy Winehouse an Lily Allen have both performed here.

University College London and King's College have a Harvard-Yale type rivalry. In the last few years, the KC mascot was stolen by UCL students. Once it was recovered, they cast a cement base so it couldn't be stolen again.

Embankment

This is the patio that overlooks the embankment. I would be a nice view on a sunny day, but we didn't mind the break from the mid-80's that we've been subjected to.

King's College Church

It's impossible to see here, but the right most window in the center set is an image of Watson, Crick, and Rosa Franklin looking at a strand of DNA in a book.

World's first battery

We stepped into the staff lounge to check out the world first battery. It was about two and a half feet wide on the long side.

Whaaaat?

Our guide, a professor of computer science, told us that this is what the typical staff meeting looked like.

After our King's College visit, a few of us walked over to see Trafalgar Square.

The Square

I took this shot from the steps of the National Gallery. It's quite a sight to see. If you look at a larger version, you can see the Canadian flag flying proudly from their embassy on the right.

Lucas and I got a bite to eat at the Texas Embassy, a Tex-Mex restaurant that I went to in 7th grade. The funny thing about the Texas Embassy is that it's adjacent to the Canadian Embassy. It's almost insulting that the Canadians should have to give up some of their building for Tex-Mex of all things. They just can't get away from us Americans.

No childish pictures to end this entry. I've been better behaved lately. Speaking of better behaved, I'm going to a pub in Camden tomorrow night where Amy Winehouse DJ's. I hope I see her!

Well, it's been good writing to you. Give me a call on Skype (screen name: edramstad) or drop me a line (edrams [at] gmail [dot] com).

Cheerio,
Eric

Meat Pie, Rowing, and Westminster Abbey

Good news, everyone! I have been to Oxford!

Oxford is a cute city. All of the buildings there are made of white stone and have very ornate architecture. Lucas and I discovered that just picking a direction and walking is a great way to see Oxford. But first thing's first: the food.

I've already hit quite a few restaurants in London and have some favorites picked out. But the lunch I had in Oxford at The Grapes was unforgettably good. I ordered a steak and ale pie that came with mashed potatoes and peas, a standard British side dish. The pie wasn't round. It was a cube shaped box made of pastie dough and was stuffed with hot steak and mushrooms with a thick brown ale sauce. I was in heaven.

Lucas and I left The Grapes and decided to take a meandering path around town until we found a pay phone. My friend Kevin is studying at Oxford this summer and I wanted to meet up with him for a bit. A word of advice regarding the over-romanticized red phone boxes that dot the streets in England: don't open one that looks like it has liquid on the floor. Every single phone box I have tried to use so far has been visited by someone with an over full bladder and an urge to call home. When I found a clean phone box, I realized I didn't know how to call Kevin's number. I plan to go back to Oxford to visit Kevin and see a few things I missed.

Here's what I did see.

The Museum of the History of Science

A very wordy building name, but surely an important institution. I didn't go in and find out, but I liked the way the building looked.

A skybridge

Isn't this the coolest looking passageway? At work we have a bridge that connects our main building with the building across the street, but this one just blows it out of the water. Lucas and I walked about a mile on streets this narrow and were eventually re-deposited on Oxford's High Street.

Once we reached the High Street, Lucas and I agreed to go punting, an attraction that draws both locals and tourists all summer long, but one that neither camp seems to be able to do. Punting looks a lot like what they do in Venice. A long, flat, narrow boat is propelled along the river by an equally long pole being pushed by either a member of your group or a hired chauffeur.

This boat is not a punt

I had spent some of the morning looking at videos on YouTube of people getting stuck around trees and losing their poles to a sticky patch of mud. When Lucas and I arrived at the dock, I saw that they had row boats. Instead of having an awkward, wet afternoon, I decided I'd do what I knew I could handle and we rented a row boat.

Who can tell me what these are?

There were great things to see on the 35 minute tour around an island. Ducks, geese, and swans as well as these odd little birds. I'm not quite sure what they are. A few chauffeured punts were filled with people sipping Pimm's, a drink favored by the British on warm, sunny days.

That was yesterday. Today, we visited Westminster Abbey.

Wow, right?

Here is the front of Westminster Abbey. We Americans feel a great sense of pride when we visit a building that has been around for 300 years. Westminster Abbey's history goes back more than 1000 years. Go back and count those zeros again - there should be three.

Take a good look...

I wasn't allowed to take any pictures inside. The other Eric got a stern verbal lashing for snapping a picture in the main hall of the Abbey so I didn't want to get myself into any trouble. We were allowed to take pictures of the College Garden that sits in the middle of the Abbey. I took a pair of panoramic shots so you could see just how big everything was.

And one more.

What time is it, Mr. Fox?

The largest bell is actually Big Ben, not the clock tower itself.

Somebody get this kid a belt!

In keeping with my habit of posting childish pictures, here's one of a poor Italian school boy with his pants falling down. Eric, 2011-20-04: Hello! I removed this photo from my Flickr account because people kept adding it to some fairly creepy young-boys-in-underpants groups. No thanks!

Class met today. Zak and Chip a demonstration of some software tools. Lucas and I have our demo next week. We've had 6 assignments due already but they haven't been too hard at all. Class meets late in the afternoon tomorrow so we can go to Buckingham Palace in the morning. Expect more pictures then! As always, there are more photos on Flickr than I've posted here so go check them out.

Pip pip, cheerio,
Eric

Towers, IBM, Portobello Road Market, BANKSY!

Oh my gosh! It's been days since I last posted an entry. Hold onto your butts!

On Thursday, we took a trip to the incredible Tower of London. I remember visiting the Tower when I came to London in 7th grade. Walking up to the building brought back an incredible flood of memories. Beefeaters, ravens, crown jewels, bloody towers, jail cells, fuzzy hatted guards... I didn't think I would remember as much as I did, but it seemed like I had just visited last summer. Oh, what's that? You want to see some pictures? You've got it!

"That's no moon, that's a battle station."

Here is a nice wide shot that gives a pretty good feel for how large the Tower of London is. It's well guarded and very castle-y.

Quoth the raven, "Give me more."

I saw this raven as soon as we arrived. He managed to pull a sandwich out of the garbage can and started picking at it right there! Yummo!

Here's that raven eating the sandwich!

Next, our whole group galloped into the Jewel House, the storage center for the -- ahem -- family jewels. We saw the royal sceptres, crowns, capes, punch bowls, rings, coronation spoons, cuff links, and goblets, but I wasn't allowed to take any pictures. Weak, right? Don't worry, there's plenty more to see from the tower.

Meanwhile, outside the Jewel House...

We were allowed to take as many pictures as we wanted of the Jewel House. Here, you can see how awesome I'm getting at taking panoramas. This is stitched together from 9 separate photos. This is only the short side of the Jewel house. The wide side takes up almost the entire width of the complex.

Pickles? Yes, please.

I got so excited when I saw the Gherkin again, I had to take another photo and share it with you, dearest readers. It was perfectly visible from the Tower.

We saw the guards undergo inspection and march away. There was a huge crowd gathered around the guards. Some Beefeaters attempted to clear a path for them, but they cleared it in the wrong spot and the guards almost trampled a few people. I was smart enough to realize they weren't going through the nice wide hole the Beefeaters had cleared for them, but instead they were going to go wherever they wanted.

"Honey, I'm ho- ouch!"

I've noticed that I'm a bit too tall for some doors and tube stations around here. I've been ducking left and right to dodge the next potential head injury, but nothing could have prepared me for this door. Think "Being John Malkovich". A staircase in front of me, behind your viewing perspective, led to high up jail cell. In the cell, old wall carvings, referred to as "graffitio," marked the stone walls. Most of them were in Latin, but from what I could tell, were all about the desperation of man in the face of adversity. If you wanted a translation, I'd say it was roughly, "OHMIGOD I'M ABOUT TO DIE, DON'T FORGET ME."

At least it's not a bloody shower, right?

I'm almost positive my dad took the same picture when I visited the Tower in 7th grade. Did you get a good look at that year? 1225. Wow.

After we saw the Tower of London, we headed over to the Tower Bridge, the bridge most often mistaken for London Bridge. I posted a picture of it in an entry a few days ago, but here are some great shots from the bridge.

A great view of the Tower of London's river side.

A view of the other side of the river.

Here's a great view of the other side of the river. The squat, round building is city hall.

I took a handful of panoramas from inside the bridge's walkway, 45 meters above the river. I won't post them here but you can look at them on my flickr page. Remember: every picture here is a link to my Flickr photos!

After we visited the Tower and Tower Bridge, we went home and rested our barking dogs for a day at Hursley Park the site of IBM's British campus. Hursley is 75 miles outside of London. We took a coach bus out of the city to IBM's unmarked campus which was surrounded by lush purple fields.

So pretty!

We guessed that this stuff was lavender, but our host told us that its a plant grown for it's valuable oil.

"Oh, hello there."

Whatever it is, I look great standing in front of it.

We spent the better part of the afternoon hearing from IBM developers and liaisons. We learned about the CICS ("Customer Information Control System", pronounced "kicks") a transaction server that handles nearly every single transaction we carry out. I won a bumper sticker for guessing that nearly 1 million developers in the world use CICS.

The best part of the day was visiting the Innovation Centre. The IC is where IBM develops services that will help improve our lives by reducing costs for businesses and, by extension, us.

"Price check on year 2050."

This was one of the coolest things we saw. It's a digital price tag that can receive updates on price instantly. No more will stores have to go around manually marking and remarking prices using stickers.

Electronic ink? Chea, right!

No, really! This price tag is an earlier version that uses a special type of ink called E-Ink. Hand scanners used by store employees can be used to change the price displayed without ever printing a single new price tag.

Do you think this thing gets hot?

IBM is big on storage. This particular unit has 160 Terabytes of storage, thousands of times as much storage your home computer has.

Are you being coy?

We also took a tour of the campus grounds. IBM has made a point to maintain the original look of the grounds. Hursley House has a long history - it was owned by Oliver Cromwell, a British Civil War general. It was later used as a hospital during the first and second World Wars and a development site for the Spitfire.

Nothing to see here.

We didn't go in here, but this is where monitors and computer innards were placed and the amount of radiation they produced was measured.

Aren't we handsome?

Another cute class photo. Behind us is the grandiose Hursley House.

After our visit to IBM, we returned home to our London flats and regrouped. After dinner, Zak, Lucas, Chip, Vinny and I decided we wanted to go out. My friend Dan Reedy recommended a visit to Fabric, one of London's posh night spots. Thanks Dan, it was awesome! Well dressed Brits and foreigners alike joined us in a night of sweaty dancing. We had a great time, but I wish we had checked their website first. They offer a student discount on admission!

The next morning, after a full night of sleep, Mia and I decided to visit Portobello Road Market, an almost undescribeable collection of vendors selling fruit and veg, tea, candy, antiques, clothes, sunglasses, CDs, and more. The market stretches for several miles and occupies the entire width of the street and sidewalk. Thousands of tourists and Londoners flock to the market to pick up viturally anything they want there. I didn't take too many pictures, but those I did give you a pretty good idea of the madness that is the Portobello Road Market.

People!

It was like getting out of a Red Sox game but more fun and there were fewer drunken baseball fans. But I did see one guy wearing his Sox shirt.

Buildings!

These buildings were gorgeous! Most of the buildings on this road were gorgeous. Even the junk shops that sold the same things as Good Will or the Salvation Army had nice shop-fronts.

Banksy!!!

Here is something I never dreamed of just stumbling upon. Banksy is probably the most famous graffiti artist in the world. I say famous, an important distinction from infamous or well known. Banksy, while not universally loved over here, is appreciated by a surprising number of people. He has snuck his work into museums, painted The Wall in Israel, and as you can see here, hit the Market.

The owner of this store sold the painting on eBay for more than £200,000 with the buyer taking responsibility for collecting it. It seems that the buyer or owner decided it would be best to leave the wall intact and allow the public to see it.

After the Market, my flat mates decided to visit Soho for dinner. We looked all over Soho but couldn't really settle on a place to eat. We picked King George, a bar that served burgers. I know, so American. What we found afterwards made almost an hour of wandering and sub-par food all seem worth it.

G-A-Y.

It was some theatre doing a gay play. No, no, a play about gay. Forget it. It's just about the most bold, fierce sign I've seen in London.

While I'm being childish, I'll finish off this post with one last picture of me. I found this just outside the IBM entrance. Think about it.

I hope I don't have to do any more of these marathon posts. They take forever to read and I really wanted this to be a bite-size blog. Look for more (but less than this) later. Oh. And check my last post for an new panoramic of The Queen's House and a video of the protest. Cool!

From London with Love,

Eric