Friday, November 25, 2005

Speed Museums

I've noticed some of the recent pictures from this weblog are missing. I can put them back, but some of that will require me to get home and grab stuff from my laptop.

In the mean time, enjoy these images from the Sunday before last. There are all sorts of sights in London that the guidebooks will tell you that you should take the whole day to see -- the National Gallery and British Museum are two of them.



In conclusion, yes, you would be better off taking a whole day at either of these places. But England is expensive these days -- doubly so since time is money. So if you find yourself with a few hours in London, don't be afraid to hit the highlights.
We set out to prove the guidebooks wrong. We had a few hours before we planned to leave London, and we decided to take in a few of the sights.

The National Gallery actually lent itself well to that sort of sightseeing. It gives out a map with the "highlights". Van Gogh's Sunflowers? Check. Cezanne's Bathers? Check. Seurat's Bathers? Check. Monet's Bathers? Check. (I think. All the bathers ran together after a while.)


Then it was off to the British Museum. Christina, in particular, wanted to see the Elgin Marbles and the Rosetta Stone. The Assyrian stuff was also pretty neat, though.

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Thursday, November 24, 2005

Testing E-mail Gateway

I noticed that the last few weblog posts aren't going out to the e-mail list, so I changed a few settings. If this goes out, consider it a reminder that you can check recent postings at http://www.pseudoprime.com/weblog.html

Kew!

Happy Thanksgiving! I'm here at my sister-in-law's in Wilmington, NC. I've set up their wireless network and have finally found time to blog from their living room.

When we were in England a couple of weeks ago...well, I guess it was about a week and a half ago that we spent time in London. We stayed at the Hilton London Metropole, where we stayed last time, and went to the Kew Botanic Gardens, another World Heritage Site.



The gardens are the oldest and some of the largest botanical gardens in the world. We took a 40-minute tram tour to get an overview.



The Gardens are currently hosting an installation by Dale Chihuly of blown glass art. We liked the way they blended with the gardens.



They had a lot of interesting very old plants. The British, after all, went all over the world a couple hundred years ago and grabbed stuff that interested them. The gardens are an interesting imperial legacy -- though these days, much more devoted to conservation.

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