Lumiere London 2016

Posted on January 22, 2016 by lisafindley

It’s cliched but true: living in a city means you always have dozens of cool things to do on any given day. In the last few weeks alone, I’ve gone to an art/design exhibit, a couple comedy shows, and a city-wide art show consisting of light installation pieces. Lumiere London was a free event around the West End and Kings Cross over four chilly days in mid-January. Fortified by a few beers at the pub, I walked around with friends and saw probably two-thirds of the entire show. There were some less-than-inspired pieces (including a few illuminated birdhouses in a sterile garden, so dull I didn’t even take photos of them), but many more lovely and weird ones. No surprise that I especially enjoyed the pieces that incorporated sound into the light show. I would’ve liked to see the whole thing, but time and cold both got in the way.

I made a short video, a pretty choppy affair due to multiple fights with Movie Maker–sorry about that. Still, it gives a pretty good sense of what I saw last week. Keep your eyes peeled for the elephant butt and the larger-than-life lily-of-the-valley.

Where in the World Wednesday

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London, England; November 30, 2015

Where in the World Wednesday

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London, England; November 19, 2015

Beautiful Britain: The Royal Park of Richmond

Posted on November 13, 2015 by lisafindley

Autumn deserves notice and celebration, and that doesn’t come in the form of pumpkin spice lattes or wool leggings. It comes in the form of long walks, preferably walks that involve some scuffling through fallen leaves. The first weekend of October this year, I paid tribute to the season by visiting Richmond Park, which is one of the royal parks of London.

Richmond Park takes up 2,500 acres, which is about three times as large as Central Park in New York (!). Some of its oaks have been standing since Charles I first created the park in 1637. Like so much in this country, very old things trundle along in the modern day here. Also, most of the beautiful, old things were only very recently made available to the general public. Pembroke Lodge, for example, was owned by the prime minister and was later the birthplace of that PM’s grandson, philosopher Bertrand Russell; the lodge is now a tea room and a place you can rent for weddings.

As far back as Henry VIII, monarchs used the park to hunt deer. Where I come from, deer hunting is a big deal, but here the deer are protected. (You have to read the fine print on some of the signs around the park to realize that they cull a certain number of deer each year to keep them from growing too numerous, since they have no natural predators in the park. So… still a hunting ground? I’m not sure how the culling is done.) There are red and fallow deer in the park, and the males are either stags or bucks depending on which type of deer they are, but I don’t know the difference so I’m afraid I just thought of them all as ‘bucks.’

Here’s a slideshow of photos I took around the park. The deer roam free, and you’re warned to keep a certain distance, especially during rutting season. I did not want to get in the way of a horny buck, so I definitely kept my distance. They make an amazing call when they’re in the mood, a really guttural groan. I got a little of that noise on a super short video, which you can also see below.

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Beautiful Britain is the title I settled on for posts about the British adventures I’m having while living in London. It covers London and non-London locations alike.

Where in the World Wednesday

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London, England; October 29, 2015

Dig this anti-AirBnB graffiti in my rapidly gentrifying neighborhood

Where in the World Wednesday

Posted on October 28, 2015 by lisafindley

London, England; October 2, 2015
Scrawled on the condom dispensing machine

Where in the World Wednesday

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London, England; September 6, 2015

Sunrise, Sunset

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Sunset, London, England

Sunrise, Sunset

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Sunset, London, England

Blocking Off Bank

Posted on October 5, 2015 by lisafindley

Cab drivers the world over aren’t happy with Uber and other “ridesharing” apps (in quotes because nothing is being shared–you’re paying for a service, like you do for a cab). There have been protests in several major cities, including some property smashing in France. A couple weeks ago, I walked right into a London protest.

I was going home the usual way from the office–walk half a mile to the bus stop just past the Bank intersection, take the bus, walk another third of a mile home, your standard city commute–and found myself in a crowd of black cabs. It even took me a second to realize that there were no other cars or buses on the roads, and that the cabs were all turned off, some of the drivers remaining in their cars and some milling about.

The banner says “Totally Failing London” as a play on Transport for London, the transit system here

People wandered about, bemused, some taking photos, some grumbling at the inconvenience, most just moving on to alternate travel plans. I took a few photos, then walked on to my own alternate travel plans; love that about a city.