The handrails by the stairs on a double-decker bus in London. The yellow reminds me of the pipes in the Richard Rogers building.
I was tempted to Photoshop out the piece that's bolted to the wall, to make the photo more abstract. But it looks like a little face, maybe an elephant, and it adds a nice, cheeky, very London, touch.
That's what Ray Davies calls it in Waterloo Sunset, but the Thames doesn't look dirty to me (here it's lapping against steps on the north side of London Bridge).
It looks more like strong tea with a little milk, which seems quite appropriate.
The famous dome, reflected in a building on the Southwark side of London Bridge.
But I enjoyed walking through the market without the huge crowds. It seemed a little forlorn; you would never believe that thousands of people were elbowing their way through only twenty-four hours earlier.
Here's another view of the Shard, asserting itself behind Southwark Cathedral.
And across the river, the Gherkin, definitely not my favorite Norman Foster building but one I do find myself liking more and more, framed by some of its older neighbors and even newer construction.
I'm heading to Heathrow late this afternoon for a very early flight back to New York in the morning, so I had a few hours to walk around and take some pictures, and I was glad to see the sun was back. It was very windy however, and I'd lost my scarf somewhere along the way, so the trek across London Bridge took my breath away, and not just in the good way.
Here's an old window in a broken wall nicely framing modern glass.
I have not seen many birds in London, though there were some very impressive pigeons flying around inside Victoria Station yesterday.
Here's one of their relatives exploring the moat by the old Roman wall Friday. Otherwise, I got nothin'.
A double decker bus in the rain, on my way back to the hotel tonight.
This handsome gentleman is my uncle Bert, who came up from Southend for our family reunion today.
There were cousins, and children of cousins, and we hadn't seen each other in too many years, and it was great, great fun.
And I only cried once.
The old and the new Liverpool Street Station -- an old brick facade viewed through modern glass.
The ceiling at Liverpool Street Station, where I was catching a bus to Victoria to meet my cousins.
You can't get much more Victorian than these vaults and columns, but there's enough craziness in the curves and angles to remind you that the infamous Bedlam hospital once stood on this site.
I've always loved that song in spite of the unwieldy lyrics -- you would swear that English is not Bernie Taupin's first language.
Here's where the London version of Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters might hang out. Although you can actually see a bit of sky here, in London that's going to just give you gray most of the time.
A row of bicycles in the City, by London Wall.
There's something about rows of bicycles that just seem so photographable, as though they're begging "Take our picture!"
The older London, as seen from my hotel room last night.
A closeup of the Richard Rogers building at 88 Wood Street.
Lower Manhattan has some of the same mixture of towering office buildings set among small, hundreds of years old stone and brick structures, but there's very little that snags my eye there the way the cheeky buildings in the City do.
A sphere within a sphere sits atop a dome with round windows -- the circles of old London amid the sharp angles of the new.
Here's another example of the way old London watches over the new: a wonderful array of chimneys among the skylights and glass office towers.
The view from our London office: Christopher Wren meets the Shard.
The beautiful weathervane is on St Anne and St Agnes church, one of many built or rebuilt by Wren after the Great Fire in 1666.
And the Shard is the new Renzo Piano skyscraper just completed south of the river.
I'm only in London a few days so I may never get acclimated enough to have anything intelligent to say about the dizzying jangle of old against new that the City has become. I certainly don't tonight; just trying to stay awake past 6pm is enough of an achievement for today.
Layers of old paint, like continents and oceans on an old globe, on a fireplug in Hell's Kitchen.
I'm spending Thanksgiving weekend in London, so travel photos will resume shortly.
Just a gull, but the background is a nice complement to the speckly coloring on his head and neck. And I love that yellow eye.
I like the way the brick townhouses being reflected in the windows are such a lovely warm gold. It feels cheerful and optimistic, during what are still, sadly, dark times for too many people in this city.
This week's urban poetry -- a carriage horse on West 38th Street.
A tufted titmouse in the park a few weeks ago.
A building under construction on Eleventh Avenue.
I like the contrast, how some of the windows have no reflections and display their empty unfinished interiors, while just to the side and below, reflections provide a mask in crazy drips and circles of black.
Bonus bird blogging. I ended up on the waterfront, walking along the Hudson. The park on the pier is still closed, and there are some mountains of uncollected garbage in the streets, but otherwise it was a normal Sunday.
This picture reminded me of the Jackson Browne lyric above, though I am confident that the last thing anyone on the Eastern Seaboard wants right now is to be Rocked on the Water.
I went for a walk this afternoon, just around the neighborhood, wanting to pretend for a while that it was just another Sunday.
There was a block-long line to the Hess station on 44th Street, but it seemed like a good sign that they were open and filling 'er up, even if there was a wait. Then I looked downtown as I crossed the street.
Another block-long line. And beyond that, another. The cops were sending motorists who tried to cut in back to 38th Street, so the line was at least six blocks long. And a second line on 44th Street stretched all the way to the river.
The parks have reopened, but I'm not eager to go survey the damage, so here's a picture of a cardinal from last spring.
Cardinals live here year-round, and it always cheers me up to see that flash of color in the grays and browns of winter. It's like a promise that color, and life, will return to the world.
Photo of the grassy overhang of a turf roof in Norway, after a rain.