London in the Sun and at night - more photos!

So I have continued my walks around London and it is nice to do it when it isn't snowing or freezing.  Things have thawed out pretty fast the last few days and I saw the sun and temperatures reached a sweltering 61 at the weekend.  I did go for a nice long walk on Friday to enjoy what little vitamin D I could absorb and I was treated to the best view yet of Central London.

I decided to walk through Soho instead of doing homework and see what I could find.  Probably one of the better places to find all the walkways and courts with real character.  It stays pretty busy most of the night with the gay bars and nightclubs staying open till about 4, I took these around 8-10 on a Monday. I do try to avoid getting people in the shots, for whatever reason I get nervous, especially so in this part of town.

 A couple kissing in an empty long walkway.

 This is the gay district with all the fancy sex shops and even some peep shows.

Night Walks

I've been reading lots of Charles Dickens since moving to London, fascinating stuff when you know the areas that he speaks of.  nothing is even close to looking like what it did when he roamed the streets, but still fun to think of his characters wandering the streets.  Really that is one reason why I started taking these pictures.  I don't have away with words the way he did, not can I write in an accent that he is famous for, but I do finding it amazing how different many of these places look at night.

Here are a few more walkways that are in my neighbourhood, I never realised how many there are until I started looking for them.

Here are a few in central London, these are taking near and around my favourite pub called the Lamb and Flag, it is in an alley/walkway.

It is situated in a nice part of town as you can see the shop in some of the photos above.  It is set back in the alley and it used to host bare knuckle boxing matches out front as well as be a haven for prostitutes to pick up clients.

The entrance to the pub.

 The entrance is located at the end of this alley, you can see the read sign down on the left near the street light.

It looks scarier than it is, as I said it is in a nice part of London near China Town, Piccadilly Circus and Tottenham Court Road.

Just down the street near a number of Theaters and restaurants you find alleys like this, really bright and people smoking.

A new project

Okay so I can't really call it a project because I am no photographer and have never done a project before, but I have started to take a series of photos.  All across London there are footpaths, I have 4 surrounding my flat and there are even more in central London.  I've never really paid much attention to them but decided that now that I know the city I might as well get to know the details.  It is just a series of photos that I have taken at night of different footpaths around the city.

 There is a Mosque at the end of the ramp apparently

 This is a boundary footpath, dividing Barnett with Camden

 An expensive £2 for not cleaning up after your dog

 Clearly people think it is a little steep

 Still a little icy

 Most of them are pretty well lit

 The footpath cuts directly into the middle of the Camden Cemetery

 Heavily used throughout the day

Nothing exciting

It is readily apparent to the 5 people that read about my life in London that I am not extremely good at this entire posting thing.  To be honest I haven't done anything worth telling anyone about.  My new semester started so all I have been doing is going to class and studying everyday.  I could sit here and go into great detail about that, but even I don't want to know what I have been reading and writing about.

Outside of the massive amount of school work I have been putting in it snowed in London for the first time since I have been here.  It was a total accumulation of about 3 inches, which wasn't too bad, except that the next day it warmed up and some of it melted away.  Unfortunately there is a deep freeze happening here and that which didn't melt is now completely frozen.  It isn't too bad, but currently everyone is walking only on one side of the street, the one side that the sun manages to hit, otherwise it is treacherous.  I went on a run this afternoon and it made for some careful jogging in places.

I only have one trip planned currently over the next bit of time and that is to Brussels.  It should be a good time, a free place to stay and people that now the city.  Apparently it is much like all the other major capital cities, but it should still be fun.  Good beer and good chocolate, so I plan on getting drunk then gorging on all the chocolates that I bought earlier in the day.

I'm currently thinking of where I might want to go on my short spring break.  I was thinking something at least a little warmer that 0 that I am currently experiencing right now.  I might head over to Southern Spain and take a short trip to Morocco and another North African country.  I need to look into the costs, I have been just spending money with no income so I need to start being a touch more careful.

I am also making a short trip home from May 13-26th.  Just in time for Mothers day and a couple of Sounders games before coming back to the UK to write my dissertation.

I will hopefully get out a little more and take pictures to post on what little I have been seeing.  Sorry again about the absence.