Travel Tuesday – London Gardens 2010

I’m back! Sorry I wasn’t back yesterday as promised but computer issues ate up most of the day.

So you may have been wondering where I’ve been. Well, hubby and I had been planning this trip for some time and we cashed in all our frequent flyer and hotel miles and headed off to London for a variety of reasons.

We visited our best friend in London and I got great inspiration for new stories and research one in particular.

We had a wonderful time and the break from legal and writing work did me a world of good. After feeling a wealth of frustration over a number of projects in the last few months, all the new sights, sounds and foods revived my flagging creativity.

I hope the sights and info will inspire you as well as over the next few months Tip Tuesdays become Travel Tuesdays as I share some of the 600+ photos that I took all over London and nearby environs.

Today’s photographs are from some of the parks in London as well as the gardens in the area. The Brits love their gardens and it shows in the neatly manicured plots in front of many of the homes. In particular, the camelias caught my eye as they were in full bloom in an assortment of colors. I’ve always wanted to plant a camelia, but NJ is just too cold. Surprisingly, London which is far more North of NJ, has more temperate weather and because of this palm trees, camelias and other plants seem to thrive there.

The weather during our visit was a little drizzly, but not cold which made it just fine for the long walks we took through the various neighborhoods and parks. We even had two beautiful sunny and warm days and when that happened everyone seem to come out of their homes and offices and head to the nearest greens.

The photos in this collection are of three different parks:

St. James Park is located directly behind 10 Downing Street and Whitehall Chapel and in front of Buckingham Palace. It is a lovely park with a lake in the middle of it. Lush lawns, trees and flowers were all over and since this park was close to offices, Parliament, etc. it was mobbed when the sun came out.

Regents Park was right near our hotel in the Camden area of London. It’s also right next to the London Zoo or ZedSL as they call it (ZSL in American Speak). Even bigger than St. James, Regents likewise had lovely gardens and an immense lake filled with an assortment of very interesting water fowl.

Finally, St. John’s Wood Church Grounds was a smaller park along the route to the Tube (aka the subway). We passed by the park several times as they had closed our Tube line for servicing during their “bank holiday” (aka public holiday) over the Easter weekend. Take a moment to notice the very old tombstones scattered in the park and buried beneath the flowering camelias. It was rather creepy to walk past them at night, but it got my writer’s mind going about what might happen in such a place in the dark!

We spent over a week in London and also did a daytrip to Stonehenge and Bath, so look for tons more photos in the coming weeks as well as some video.

I hope you enjoy!

If you can’t see the slideshow below, you can click on this link to see the London Gardens 2010 photos!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2055743&id=1130005412&l=7d26d54995