Since my last post, I have stayed busy every day. Thursday, I cut out of work a little early to go to the Science Museum, which is near Imperial College. I went through part of the Energy exhibit, which shows the history of steam engines. The early steam engines were very large machines, and were quite impressive to see. Friday evening, I went for a stroll through Hyde Park. The Albert Memorial there is breathtaking. I tried to take some pictures of it, but the lighting wasn't good at 6 PM with cloudy skies. I will definitely take more pictures outside, but I am waiting for some sunnier days. My friend Mark got a group of his friends together from Imperial, and we went out to a pub on Friday night. The weather was downright chilly; it felt like 50 F or less. It was good getting to meet some of the people I'll be working around this summer.


Saturday afternoon, I went to the British Museum. If you've ever been there, you know that the place is enormous. Granted, I was taking my time, but it took me about 4 hours to go through the Egyptian sculpture gallery and half of the Enlightenment gallery, which houses many pieces of the museum's original collection dating from the 1750s. Saturday evening, I took the tube down to the north side of the Thames, then walked across the Millenium Brigde. My main purpose for doing this was to get a good view of Big Ben and Parliament, which I haven't yet visited. I stopped and ate dinner at a restaurant on the south bank, near the London Eye. On Sunday, I went to the Imperial War Museum. If you have a keen interest in WWI or WWII, then you would really enjoy this museum.

Here is a link to my photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/22316703@N05/sets/

My advisors from GT are visiting London this week. Tomorrow, we are going to Hampton Court, Henry VIII's palace southwest of the city.

The weather here has been really cool, although it has threatened rain each of the past five days. Few, if any, buildings here have air conditioning, as it is not usually needed. The highs here have been in the low to mid 60s since last Wed., which feels really good compared to a summer day in the ATL.

Camden Market, not too far from my dorm, is actually made up of six markets, five of which are outdoor. It is a popular tourist attraction, drawing as many as 100,000 on a Sunday afternoon. To avoid overcrowding, the Camden Town Station, on the Northern line of the tube, does not allow passengers to enter the station from 1-5:30 PM on Sundays. This tube station, the one which I enter every morning, is a bit of an anomally in itself. The Northern line is in two branches both north and south of the station, with the X-interchange just south of the station. Northbound trains must commit to a branch before they reach the station, but southbound trains can go on either branch after leaving the station. When the line was being constructed, London Transport wanted to build the tunnels under streets, to avoid purchasing buildings for demolition. The streets along the tube route are narrow, so the northbound and southbound platforms are stacked on top of one another. These features supposedly make Camden Town station the most complex station on the entire tube network.