As far as books go, I’m about 70 pages away from finishing my 13th book-I should be finishing my 16th! Oh well, I have done fairly well in my catch up efforts considering I was 8, 9, or 10 books behind at one point. It’s been fairly hard spending time reading lately mainly because I’ve been a bit busy and it has been GORGEOUS outside! Sunny and warm weather combined with a volcanic ash cloud has made for perfect skies. That may sound odd but we really haven’t had all that much ash land in the city (at least not from what I can tell). A few days after Mt. Pinatubo erupted in June 1991, (I was 6 years old and living in Singapore at the time), ash rained down onto our family car so heavily that we could have written our names in it. Imagine gray snow, if you will. What we’ve had in London is nothing in comparison. Instead, the flight ban has led to the clearest skies London has seen for centuries and wonderfully red sunsets.
Today I ventured to the Design Museum, which is fantastic BTW, and made the crazy brilliant decision to walk home. The journey from the Tower Bridge area to Notting Hill is roughly six miles, or ten kilometers, and I had left home in a pair of new(ish) sandals. I’m pretty sure they’re broken in now!
The journey home began with an intensely blue sky over Tower Bridge and a couple of tourists who sneakily tried to take a picture with me in the background. I wound my way through Shad Thames, along the Thames walk, cut past Parliament, dived into St. James’s Park, and carried on through the parks until I made my way home. You can see a whole mess of photos on Flickr and a few thrown in at the top of this post for fun. Fortunately for those who wish to travel, and sadly for those of us who love these skies, the flight ban looks to be lightening up shortly.