17 posts tagged “2007”

The sundews I bought a few weeks ago at California Carnivores are finally starting to open up.  With the low morning sun, they really live up to their name.  Here's a few shots of the newly unfurled leaves.

Saw this on the way to breakfast on Sunday morning:

LOST

One of the only places to go bowling in the city.  If you're not a serious bowler and want something different to do on a weekday night with your friends, Presdio Bowl is a great place to go.  Located in the beautiful Presidio of San Francisco, they have a good selection of beer, wine and booze, (including Budweiser in bowling pin shaped bottles) as well as all the fried food you could want.

The Presidio is a bit confusing if you've never been there.  However if you can locate the parade ground, the bowling alley is at the very end.

Band!  Or, the beginning of new photos. I just got my new camera this week and I decided to play band paparazzi while Steve, Tiff, Adam and Mark played the recently released, Rock Band.  Here they are on drums, guitar, vocals and bass:

Apparently a big container ship (bigger than the titanic, but smaller than other modern container ships says another article) crashed into one of the Bay Bridge's towers yesterday at 8am.  Now we've got spilled fuel in the bay.

I took a trip to the Tower of London last week, which I was very excited about.  I had always heard stories about the tower, prisoners, torture, daring escapes, great robberies, ghosts and the Crown Jewels held locked up tight.  When I imagined the Tower of London, I thought of something like this:

A tall imposing tower, unscalable by thieves a tight lockup for treasonous queens, a resting place for the wealth of the British Royalty.  However, it seems that I had been royally confused about the whole issue.  First of all, the tower part of the Tower of London, isn't just the single tower you see above.  Its actually a small fortress with four towers at each corner:
Second of all, there is a whole set of a buildings that surround this inner tower and two walls that ring the whole complex:
This green area used to be a moat, filled by and connected to the Thames river.  Finally, the Crown Jewels are stored in one of the buildings that surround the tower and are not actually inside the tower.

So the whole complex is still pretty impressive and I really enjoyed my tour, but its completely different than what I had imagined.

Oh and the Crown Jewels.  This was probably the only let down.  You enter the building where they are kept and queue up in a line that makes 4 loops back and forth through a room, getting closer to the front.  At the front of the room is a video playing the coronation of one of the queens.  After this room, you queue through three more room just like this one.  Each shows some some other aspect of the ceremonies that involve the Crown Jewels along with video of a slowly rotating example of one of these jewels.  It isn't until after all this that you get to a room where the main crowns are held.  In this room you must get on a moving walkway that takes you by each glass case at about 1 mph.  After that are a few rooms of bejeweled clothing, gold serving platers, etc.  Somewhat interesting, but I guess I was expecting some kind of pirate chest affair, with gold and jewels spilling out onto the floor.

The tower itself currently holds an armory museum and I guess at various times was an armory:

Outside the tower, but within the walls are the ravens.  These large birds hop around like they own the place, and apparently they are given full liberty.  Supposedly someone had said/decreed/prophesied that if the ravens ever left the Tower of London, that the Monarchy would fall.

However, other sources say that the legend is recent and that during one of the world wars the ravens were absent with no ill effect to the Monarchy.  Still though, the birds are kept and given full run of the place.  Oh and their wings are clipped just to be safe.

Also in the courtyard were a large collection of cannon lying around, 'gifts' from other countries.   Some of these gifts were given in peace and some were just taken.  My favorite was an elaborately decorated cannon held up at one end by some kind of sheep-lion chimera.  I'm not sure if any artillery unit could wheel this into battle with a straight face.

Finally, the outer wall of the Tower of London had a lot of interesting turrets, towers and gates.  In particular Traitors Gate

which is a water entrance right off the Thames.  Originally it was built as the private entrance for one of the kings but later it became the primary gate used for prisoners to be held at the tower, which is how it got its current name.  The lore surrounding this gate was too diffuse for me to have created any real preconceptions, but I have to say, it lives up to feeling and flavor of the Tower of London as I had always envisioned.

I took a walk along the south bank of the Thames on Monday starting at the House of Parliament.

The Parliament building includes Big Ben which I didn't realize until I got out of the tube stop.  The first thing you see out of the station is that sandy brown stone, elaborately ribbed in ever increasing detail.  It was a little disorienting.  It took me a few turns around before I looked up and realized I was right underneath Big Ben:

Yup, its pretty big.  I walked across the street to Westminster Abbey and almost (accidentally) got in for free by walking in the back entrance.  I got shooed out and redirected to the front where I paid my £10 fair and square.  Inside is pretty impressive.  Though it seems to be the accumulation of 900 years royal/religious knick-knacks.  Of course these knick-knacks are items made of precious metals and stones made by renowned craftsmen, artwork and famous corpses but still, there's a lot of random things in there.
I also found an example of my namesake while I was there.  In the back is the cloister and in the center the cloister garth:
Photos weren't allowed in the Abbey, but I decided I could sneak this one off.  After I got my fill of cloisters, chapter houses, transepts and naves, I walked over the Westminster Bridge and walked along the south side of the Thames. 

A hummingbird flew into my kitchen this morning!  I just bought some new flowers for my back balcony and I guess they attracted this hummingbird more quickly than I expected.  I leave my back door open for the cats and this morning I saw this guy flit inside and hover about 5 feet away from me.  He was too fast for a picture; a quick rotate left, rotate right and then left back through the door.  The cats definitely noticed as well.  I'm a little worried now that I've setup a little hummingbird deathtrap :(

This Labor Day Steve introduced Nick and I to the world of disc golf.  I would probably say before Monday I might have described disc golf as a novelty sport like riding a tiny go-kart with a fez on or keeping a puck sliding on ice by sweeping brooms in front of it; you know, games you make up with your friends when you were a kid.

Disc golf was pretty fun though.  Not that those other things aren't fun but made up games tend to lack structure and complexity which make them boring to play after a few broom whisks.  The course we played on at Golden Gate Park, really felt like a real course.  It took itself seriously and that made the game a lot more fun and more challenging than what I'd imagined.  Each hole had a concrete pad to use as a tee off point.  Each tee off had a small map painted on a stump with the yardage and location of the pin.  There were obviously techniques required in order to play certain holes rather than a slapdash assortment of pins strewn throughout the forest.

There are also several different types of discs you can buy that are better for different situations.  Some will cut right when thrown, some left.  This can be very useful to get around the tree thats between you and the pin.  Some are heavier to be more stable for 'putting'.

It was a great day and at the end of 18 holes we all did well, especially for Nick and my first time.  And, unlike real golf, I wasn't prepared to throw all my clubs into the lake.