Dancing in colour

I felt the need to escape this weekend, to run away from life and have an adventure so I followed that urge and booked my bus ticket to London. There is so many touristy things to see and do in London that it can be easy to become blinded to some of the exciting smaller moments that happen in the city everyday.

After wandering through the city I returned to my hotel just as the sun was setting. It was coming home that I stumbled across a number of teenagers performing bike tricks in an alcove next the thames river. I was fascinated by the colour, energy and joy that these people found as they leapt through the air on their bikes.

As I followed them with my camera I tried to capture them flying through the air. Dancing in the light, shooting past coloured walls, landing tricks and occasionally landing flat on their arses. It was like they were dancing in colour and I was there to capture every glorious moment of it.

London: Buckingham palace, Westminister and The British Museum

I recently decided that it was time for a well deserved break away from Cardiff and so after a little research I settled on a trip away travelling to Brussels and Amsterdam.

After a discussion with my friend we decided that going by Megabus would be the way forward. After all it was both cheap and reliable and afforded us the opportunity to spend the day in London before travelling onwards.

After arriving in the early afternoon we decided to first take in two of the major sight seeing sights in London; Westminster and Buckingham Palace. Because we were travelling in January the grounds around the palace were quite quiet and we were able to wander around the fenced off palace and the statues surrounding it in relative peace and quiet.

Afterwards we took a stroll through a lovely nearby park to Westminster, where we wandered around the government building and took pictures of Big Ben. Afterwards we went to London's comic book museum and had lunch before heading off to The British Museum.

This Museum really is one of the highlights in London, stuffed as it is with statues, curios and religious artifacts and housed in a magnificently impressive building. We started in a section filled with golden clocks, delicate astrological equipment and impressive statues. Afterwards we wandered through the distinctly painful looking acient America's section (with delightful statues threading rope through their tongues) before taking a turn through Classical Greece, Stone Age man, Babylon and Ancient Egypt.

We left the museum thoroughly impressed with what we had seen. Afterwards we had food at a particularly delicious and most importantly cheap Mexican take out place.

When we had eaten our full we wandered back through the city ready to take the bus through to Brussels and the start of our European adventure.

London calling

I decided that rather then going straight home after my flight, I would to take the opportunity to have a wander around London. Now I've always considered Britain's capital to be a bit of a strange place, it almost seems to me to be one of the least British feeling cities in the entire country.

Now whether that is because of the interconnecting spiderweb that is the London Underground, the fact that the place is such a melting pot or the way that the feel of the city changes completely from district to district (try going from the market places of Camden to the river front near Westminster to see what I mean) I just don't know. Whatever it is it leads to a city that somehow manages to feel both completely alien and familiar at the same time.

I started my time there by heading over to Trafalgar square and after picking up a coffee I took in the sights of Nelson's column before heading to the National Gallery to take in some art. I was halfway through the gallery when I remembered just how much I disliked Renaissance artwork (boring, samey and full of disturbing man child like images of Christ) so I reversed direction jumped on a train and set sail for the Tate gallery instead.

The gallery was beautiful, modern and full of interesting and thought provoking pieces and I spent a thoroughly cultured couple of hours wandering around it. Afterwards I decided that I was in need of a change and so I headed towards one of my favourite parts of London; Camden Market.

This awesome place is full of shop after shop of cool clothes, alternative people, great food and a beautiful canal through which boats pass upon a regular basis. I decided to get lost amongst the maze like stalls of the marketplace and after perusing the wares I decided on a snazzy little jumper for myself. I ended the day by getting in a pint at The World's End pub before heading to the subway ready to finally travel home.