We stood on a murder site...

Original post date: Saturday, March 22, 2008


We stood on a murder site...

Wednesday - Day Five

Today started out a little slow, we were starting to get tired. But off we go after our hot-cross buns to see Kensington Park, this is the park that J. M. Barrie got the inspiration for Peter Pan. We walked around the park and saw the statue of Peter Pan. The park was incredible, gorgeous layout. We wound our way to a fountain dedicated to Princess Diana. This was one of the coolest fountains I have ever seen. It was more like a lazy river than a traditional spray in the air fountain. There was a beginning point of the water and it fed into a pool and from that upper pool it flowed down either direction over a granite path. This path was interspersed with carved granite sections that gave the flow of water some resistance causing miniature rapids. All of this fed into a larger pool at the bottom. The water was fed from an underground aquifer/spring so it was constantly replenished. It was very soothing and beautiful. Jason had to leave us at this point to go to work for a short bit. So Heather, Steph and I went on to Kensington Palace and looked around there. Even the shrubbery was magnificent. We didn’t go inside we just walked around the gardens and the main entrance, all of that was grand enough. We hopped on a bus and made our way to Harrod’s.

Harrod’s is a department store apparently world famous, I had never heard of it, but I am not much of a shopper. The store was truly unbelievable, separate areas for all kinds of stuff, chocolates, perfumes, food, I know it just sounds like any other mall the way I am describing it but trust me it was not just another mall, it was the department store of all department stores. But we didn’t last long, we were very hungry so we grabbed some wraps to go and made our way to Trafalgar Square.

This is the famous square with all of the pigeons, well there are very few pigeons now because if you are caught feeding them you get fined £500, and with the exchange rate the way it is right now that is a lot of money. We ate our very late lunch, by now it was almost 430p, and headed to the National Portrait Gallery.

At the NPG they had a collection of Vanity Fair photos dating back to 1913. The magazine actually had a pause in its publication for about 50 years but kept its influence even without being published. When they decided to start to publish it again they continued on the same track of fabulous photograpy, if you have ever picked up the magazine you know the photography I am speaking of. It was an amazing display of artistry and the portraits of who’s who’s in our society over the past century. This was the only museum we actually had time to go see, oh well we will just have to go back to London.

After the gallery Jason met back up with us and we headed to our Jack the Ripper tour. This was pretty cool because we actually got to stand where the murders took place, well most of them. And when we couldn’t stand there we could see the building if it hadn’t been knocked down. If I remember correctly only one out of the five had been knocked down and rebuilt. The others had changed a bit but the original under structure was still there. It was just neat seeing the buildings basically unchanged since these horrific murders took place. Our guide was a Copper and worked in Scotland Yard so he had some good insider information. It was very fun. After hours and hours of walking we finally made it back to Jason and Stephanie’s local pub and had some fish and chips. It was a grand day and to finish it off with some good food and fantastic friends was excellent.

We headed home the next day, leaving Jason and Stephanies flat at 630a to get to our train and plane on time. It was quite travel day, and we got home safe and went straight to bed.