When I finally tore my eyes away from Westminster Abbey I was thrilled to see Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament just across the street! Part of my excitement came from the fact that I was standing in front of the world-famous building, and the second part was that I didn’t have to walk my tired legs too far to get a close look! Did you know that the name ‘Big Ben’ is actually a nickname for the heaviest bell inside the tower? The official name is The Great Bell of Westminster, and the clock is The Great Clock of Westminster. The tower itself is called the Elizabeth Tower, but for the sake of convenience I am just going to refer to it as Big Ben.
At times like this I wish I could sprout wings so I could fly up there for a better look! I don’t have very good eyesight to begin with so it’s not always easy to see all the detail that are a fair distance away.
I almost jumped up and down with excitement when the bells started ringing at noon! The photo is a minute after because I was taking video to record the sound of the bells. I haven’t figured out how to rotate my video without getting the tops and bottoms chopped off though. I haven’t done much video editing so I had completely overlooked the fact that videos are always in landscape orientation. You would think it would be a simple thing to rotate a video to portrait mode considering how easy it is to rotate photos. I will have to look more into the matter as it seems that it is possible to upload videos in portrait orientation to Vimeo. I just need to find an editor that will rotate it for me! Do you have any suggestions for me?
I didn’t actually go inside the House of Parliament, but I was happy just seeing it from different angles as I crossed the Westminster Bridge.
The fun thing about taking several photos of a clock is that you get a time stamp without the ugly yellow letters that the default camera settings will slap on the bottom of the photo. This photo has a bit of an odd angle to it. It was taken about a third of the ways across the bridge.
On the other side you could see the London Eye. I think it looks much nicer at night when it’s lit up though.
#inYourFootsteps
It was nice leaning against the warm wall taking photos and watching boats appear from under the bridge. This area wasn’t quite so busy with tourists as the walkways of Westminster Bridge. Even though I was a tourist myself, I was happy to escape the crowd and find a peaceful moment in the day.
As I was walking across the cross walk I was delighted to see a Taxi pulling up to a stop in front of me. I really liked the shape of the car as it was not something I’ve seen elsewhere. Later as I was editing this photo I noticed the zig-zag markings on the street. I am told they alert the driver that they are approaching a cross walk. I found drivers in London to be quite considerate of pedestrians.
While I was taking photos of iconic things, I also grabbed some snaps of the double-decker bus and the phone box! I was actually rather surprised by the state of most of the phone boxes I saw in London. They were pretty dirty so I never ended up going inside. I was keeping my eyes peeled for a cleaner one to take a photo and was happy to add this to my collection. What other iconic things remind you of London?
