Mischief in Europe: "No dear, you can't eat the pigeons"

London. The streets here are ridiculously difficult to navigate. I've been spoiled with my American cities and their propensity for logic and reasoning when designed. Things like a grid system and streets that consistently have the same name. In London it's as if they gave a 4 year old a magic marker and told him to scribble out some lines on a piece of construction paper then decided to use the resulting clusterf... (hi Mom :)) as the plan for the city. On top of the tornado of streets, the names change after every intersection (that's assuming you've found a street that lasts more than a couple "blocks", and I use that term loosely) so for example Cranbourn st becomes Garrick st which become Bedford st then ends. All in a matter of 5 blocks. It's mayhem. But fun mayhem. Rant concluded.

I went to all the big touristy draws Friday. Trafalgar Square, The Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and saw works by Monet, Cezanne, and Seurat at The National Gallery. I completely missed the Picasso section at Tate Modern. I'll be returning. My favorite piece in The National Gallery is called The Tempest by Peder Balke. There were hordes of people everywhere for all of that. Hordes is an understatement. I didn't really enjoy being surrounded by a million tourists. I fancy myself as a traveller, not a tourist haha. But these are things I wanted to see. Once I escaped the strollers and people pointing at the very big and obvious building directly in front of them I started exploring the city. London is a gorgeous place. "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life", said by Samuel Johnson, is a great way to sum up everything I saw once I started to roam the streets. Even though it was a bank holiday (Good Friday) and a lot of places were closed all the different shops and potential for life there was extraordinary.

I took a lot of pictures. I have a lot of pictures that are distracting due to the sea of people in them. I'll post the better ones. And sorry, no Lego's today. There just wasn't a good time or any space to set them up. I look forward to exploring the city more.