Christopher Wren contributed a lot to London’s landscape and seeing as yesterday was a rare winter day in London (bright blue skies, warm sun, but of course still really cold), I thought it would be good to go and visit another one of this famous buildings, the Monument to the Great Fire of London.

The Monument is 202 feet high (62 metres), apparently the distance it is from the origin of the fire that first started the Great Fire of London. There are 311 steps in a winding corridor that you have to climb to reach the very small viewing platform. At the top of the monument is a Gilded Urn of Fire, representative of the Great Fire. The bottom of the monument has a number of inscriptions and drawings depicting the events that conspired during this time.

The city maintains this historic building and there is a very small entrance fee of £2 for adults and £1.50 for children (up from the 6p it was when it first opened).

The Monument can be found closest to Monument Station (Central/Northern Line), or by foot on Monument Street, London, EC3R 8AH.

Despite have lots of signs even a bus stop named after it, I really think they should have called them the Remains of the Temple of Mithras instead of just The Temple of Mithras.

As you can see from the photo below, there really isn’t much of a temple. This one was moved (almost all of these were below the ground) was moved to Temple Court on Queen Victoria Street and historians believe that it was built in the middle of the 2nd Century AD.

After having a delicious breakfast at 202 again and meeting up with Kath from Oxford, we went to visit the Tate Modern down at Southbank. It is a huge warehouse building directly opposite the Millenium bridge and located next to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Entry is free except ot some special exhibits, but the rest of the collections are free to view. The gallery shows some interesting collections such as the Embankment structure by Rachel Whiteread pictured below.

Other collections were a little disappointing to me, but mainly because they were far too abstract for me to understand or even try to understand. A good example is one in which red paint was “violently” thrown at a canvas so that it would achieve some message which I couldn’t quite get immediately out of a canvas simply covered in red paint. My most favourite of the collection was the Andy Warhol room that showed a number of his works (including the Elvis Presley and Jackie Kennedy ones) and described his interesting motivations behind them.

I ventured out to visit the Natural History Museum at South Kensington today but the drab wet weather the long queues that formed outside made me decide that the wait was not worth it. Instead I took the opportunity to cross “Museum Lane” to the side that houses the Victoria and Albert Museum. This museum displays probably one of the largest collections of decorative arts including contemporary and historic, and just like most other museums in London entrance is free.

The museum itself houses apparently 146 different galleries and regularly hosts a number of seminars discussing various topics in contemporary art. The building itself is massive composed of several floors each with different parts displaying various works such as ceramics, glass, metalwork, furniture, photos and paintings. Though some of the selections are not always relevant or functional, many of them you would still appreciate as being impressively decorative.

After a while of walking around I caught the tube and visited the National Portrait Gallery. The gallery is yet another free institution most well known for the large collection of busts in paint, picture of photos on display. Its prime location between Trafalgar Square and Leceister Square makes it extremely popular and definitely worth the visit. Being Britian’s national gallery, you should find it no surprise that many of the busts inside are mainly English people. On the first floor that I visited there was a eerily life-sized portrait of Dame Judi Dench and even more amazing 3D display of JK Rowling (the author of Harry Potter) in a setting that truly looked life like. Of the exhibitions that I visited, I definitely enjoyed the “Look at Me” the most. This exhibition was commissioned and took a close look at the lives of teenagers from around England, some of which were predictably amateurish but others that were both powerfully relevant and presented magnificently.

On Saturday I took a trip up to Oxford to visit my good friend Kath from back home. I’d been meaning to visit her since I got here as she’s come down to visit me twice now, so I thought this weekend was as good as any. There are several ways of getting to Oxford but by far, the best I know of is the series of buses called the Oxford Tube. In almost all ways, the Oxford Tube is much better than anything that the London Public Transport department has to offer. The double-decker buses that come almost every ten minutes operate 24 hours and are fully air-conditioned, outfitted with reclining and very comfortable seats and a toilet to boot. The buses have three pick up and drop off points in London city (one very conveniently a ten minute walk from me at Notting Hill Gate) taking about one and a half hours to get to the high street in Oxford city.

Despite the prediction of gloomy and drizzly weather, we were spoilt with almost clear blue skies for most of day and got to see Oxford when it was most spectacular. There is an open topped tour bus that takes you around to all of the different sights to see, but because we had Kath as our own little tour guide, we got to see it from a completely different and most probably much better angle.

Unlike the universities we have back home or in the United States, Oxford is laid out as if the entire city is the campus. Students must be affiliated with a college that is really more an association that anything (only the freshers or first year students tend to stay on campus) and are strewn between the cafes, pubs and stores of the city. The actual University buildings are a little bit further out but things are within a decent walking distance made even shorter by a bike or bus ride. Every college is extremely private with visitors not generally welcomed and the grounds kept pristine at all times. We had a good laugh at the story that Kath told us of the beautifully green grass that college members had “grass privileges” for in the summer time allowing them to sit on it, or play croquet only between the times of 11 and 1. Having said that I suppose there were very good reasons it was as green and lush as it was.

The town itself is beautiful filled with many historic and well maintained buildings linked together by a series of cobblestone paths. We saw many sights including Carfax Tower (the best aerial view of Oxford), Christ Church (one of the largest colleges surrounded by stunning gardens and rivers full of rowers and punters), the Radcliffe Square and Radcliffe Camera, the Bodleian Library (that stocks all of the published articles and journals in the world), and the Bridge of Sighs (a model of the famous Ponte de Sospiri in Venice). All the buildings are intricately detailed with stunning stone work and heads of people, dragons and gargoyles adorning the outside.

We had a great lunch at the pub, Far from the Madding Crowds, and indulged in the whole café, market and book culture (the amazingly huge Blackwell’s). It was a great day thanks to Kath and we headed back completely tired and content.

Last week I organised a picnic with a large group of great people to visit Hampstead Heath yesterday. These huge parklands lie on London’s north side and contain large parts of untouched English greenery, the most I have seen since being here. London was even kind enough to lay on a beautifully warm day, despite the weatherman’s forecast for weekend showers. Everyone brought a lot of different food and the spread turned out so big that we could not even finish it all. We played a bit of football (soccer for all those back home), frisbee and Michelle even had a go at flying her kite. It was a fantastic day for what seems like one of the last sunny days I might see for a while. Thanks to Ben, Michelle, Karl, Caroline, Megan, Mel, (the other) Ben, Paul and Nathan for tagging along and making it so good.