Day Trip

Lumiere London 2

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Lumiere London was a big lighting festival that was held in January. I visited several areas in central London and my journey continued from the venues I took viewing the installations at Westminster Abbey, Soth Bank, Oxford Cirus to Piccadilly through Regent Street in my previous post.

Leicester Square

One of the main exhibition areas of this year’s Lumiere London was Leicester Square. Inside the square there were giant rabbits, fox, frogs as well as a huge Foxglove plant and many Butterflies glowed in the darkness, creating a magical fairy tale world.

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It was really the Night Garden

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Lumiere London 1

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There was a wonderful event in London about two weeks ago (the 18th – 21st January) called ‘Lumiere London’. This was a festival of Lighting displayed in the public space in central London. I went into town and took lots of photos so I would be able to share the experience with you all. However, straight after that event, Bang!! I got the flu… I don’t catch a cold very often so this flu germ must have been a super strong one. Somebody in the audience gave it to me. I gargled to spit out the germs and washed hand as soon as I got back home but two day after the day I became ill with a high temperature with aching muscles and stuck in bed for a week.

I apologise for the delay of posting these photos but because it was a very interesting event I would like to share the photos with you here.

Lumiere London

The event ‘Lumiere London’ was the open viewing art works of 50 lighting works by different artists in public space. The venues were spread out in several areas in Central London. The area I went to see first was in Westminster.

Westminster Abbey

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This was one of the major art works for this year’s event. The lighting was done in two entrances. The light of the main entrance changed from time to time. There seemed lighting from inside as well so the stained glass rose up clearly to emarge with the outside lighting. The unusual colour choice of lighting for a cathedral was great too.

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Weekend Photo – Stonehenge

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Stonehenge

This year’s first Weekend Photo is this ‘Stonehenge’. It was taken on one freezing morning in November last year. The air was sharp and crisp! The last time I had visited this site was probably almost 20 years ago but thankfully the stones were still standing silently and mysteriously as they have been for thousands of years.

Halloween at Hogwarts

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Although I enjoyed more reading the Harry Potter books, I liked seeing the films as well. When a friend of mine visited me in London we decided to go to the Harry Potter Studio Tour.

Harry Potter Studio Tour

The studio is located at the outside of London. We had to take a short ride on the overground rail from Euston station and a bus. However, it was much closer that I had expected.

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Meeting Green Parrot in Kensington Gardens

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I visited Kensington Gardens in September and noticed there were so many Sweet Chestnuts on branches. They must be falling down to the ground by now and ready to eat.

Kensington chestnut

While looking around in the park at the little details, I noticed something camouflaging so well in big trees.

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Diana Garden in Kensington Gardens

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I mentioned that Kensington Gardens is famous as the place where the fictious character Peter Pan lived but it is also famous for the place Princess Diana lived after her divorce with Prince Charles. When I visited Kensington Gardens, it was also a memorial period of 20 years since her death. Apart from looking for Peter Pan another main purpose of my visit to this park was seeing the memorial garden of Kensington Palace which was specially planted for this occasion.

Kensington Palace is located very west part of Kensington Gardens. Several bunches of flowers were placed at the front gate of the Palace. If it was on the actual day of her memorial I am sure there would have been more flowers.

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Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens

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I have recently read ‘Peter Pan and Wendy’. It is the story everybody knows that Peter Pan visits the bedroom of Wendy and her two brothers and then they fly to Neverland and fight with Hook the captain of Pirates. It is actually published by following the story of ‘Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens’ and also the Play script ‘Peter Pan (The Boy Who wouldn’t Grow Up)’. Of course I knew the story but when I saw the book in library I thought “Hum, I have never actually read it. How much do I know about the characters?” so I borrowed the book.

Now I have finished reading the story and can tell you I discovered several new factors about the story. The biggest surprise was Peter Pan’s age. Okay, he is a boy and also old, because he never grows up and lives forever, which means he is very old. But do you know how old he was when he left his parents’ house? He says in the story “Wendy, I ran away the day I was born”.(+o+)(=ﾟωﾟ)ﾉ😵! It means he is not even 1day old!! Even in the story of ‘Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens’ he was 7 DAYS OLD!! I don’t know why but the author J. M. Barrie changed when Peter decided to leeve his parents’ home but one thing I can tell you is that he is not even a toddler. He is a newborn baby. Realistically he cannot speak or even stand up?! OK, it is a fictious story so anything is possible.

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Anyway, after he left his parents he started living in Kensington Gardens. When I had time in central London I suddenly wanted to see where Peter Pan spent time so I visited Kensington Gardens.

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Walking into the Queen’s Wood

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When you fly to or from London, where I live, you can see many greenery area from the sky. Although it is the capital city of England, even apart from the famous parks in the central area there are many great woods in London. The further out you go towards suburb, the more woodland there are. There are several woods quite close to where I live as well and I went to one of them at the last weekend for a short walk.

Queens Wood1One of my favourite woods near my house is Queen’s Wood. According to the council’s website ‘Queen’s Wood is one of the boroughs four Local Nature Reserves and one of four ancient woodland in Haringey. These woods are thought to be the direct descendants of the original “wildwood”, which covered most of Britain about five thousand years ago’. That sounds very impressive.

As it’s described as an ancient woodland as soon as you step your foot in the wood, most of the ground is covered thickly with tree canopies. They are all native trees such as English oak, beech, hornbeam, midland hawthorn, hazel, mountain ash, field maple, cherry and holly etc.

Queens Wood2

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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

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You might not have guessed but I am a quite Harry Potter fan. I have to admit that I am not the young generation who grew up with the characters whilst the books were published but I have read all the stories and saw all the films. I even read the sequel story “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” which was written in the theatre script format. I generally like going to theatres and am also accustomed to reading scripts, however, in this book I occasionally had problems visualising the scenes described how it would be created on the live stage. As you can image the story was about the wizardry world so there are several scenes the characters are using magic or some un-natural event occurs. That is why I wanted to go and see it for real. For the people who would like to see the play, don’t worry I am not going to give away any spoilers here.

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