Wednesday, January 31, 2007

walk this way

Today has proved very exciting. We started out with an adventure trying to find the Carphone Warehouse in Bayswater. We would have been okay, but we ended up transferring to the wrong train at Paddington station. The station was beautiful. I loved that it was outside. It looked so well well-worn. The light posts and the bridge walk-ways above the tracks were rusted and the paint was chipping. I can't stop thinking about the millions of people, famous and otherwise who've ridden the same trains and walked the streets and the platforms of the stations before I got there. There is so much history here, it's a little overwhelming.

So we got off at Paddington station, and ended up going the opposite direction. We got to Edgeware Road, but then the trains stopped running. There was something wrong with the signals and it was delaying the trains. So we decided to walk. We ended up walking the wrong direction and ended up back at Paddingtion. We went the right way then, and got to where we wanted to go.

After our little adventure, we took a walking tour of Maida Vale and Little Venice - the area where we are living. It's so quant and beautiful. We walked down to the canals and ended in Regent Park. Here are some of the pictures from our day's journey...


This image is of the actual Little Venice. There are two canals that join here, one goes toward Camden and the Zoo, the other goes... actually I don't remember. But it was really pretty, and we decided that when it gets warmer we're going to go back and picnic on the banks.

This is a photo of the canals near the Maida Tunnel. The guide said that people lived on the canal boats. The Tunnel was cool, HUGE, in the old days when canal boats were pulled by horses, they used to have to unhook the horses because the Tunnel runs straight into a hill. The bargees (people who run the barges) would then lie down on their backs on top of the barge and use their feet and hands to push the boat through.

We ended up seeing Paul McCartney's old house too... that was pretty neat, but the picture is a a little blurry, so I won't post it. But it was cool - it was right across the street from one of Madonna's old homes... I thought it was interesting - our guide seemed to know everything about, well everything.

Tomorrow we're going to visit our school building...

More soon,

b

1 comment:

Mom said...

Hi Bethany -

It's great to read about everything you are seeing. I had just learned the other day that Little Venice has canals. It will be fun to show Ryan the canal boats.

Love, Mom

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