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- The Statue of Queen Victoria is in front of Kensington Palace. On January 16th, I walked to see it for the first time after I had come to Britain. Although it is very near from my dormitory, I haven't been there yet. So I stopped at the palace on my way to Kew Gardens. At that time, I didn't thought of visiting the place again. But about 15 days later, the heavy snow made me feel like seeing it again, because I wondered how the beautiful scenery had been changed by the snow. In short, I just wanted to watch the snowy Kensington Palace. The two pictures above seem to me very interesting. They tell us how the weather adds some special effect on the original scene. The snowy Kensington Garden gave me lots of beautiful landscapes to be taken with the camera. One of them is pasted below in the left. The palace is fronted with a round pond, in which many birds flock together. The panorama impressed me very much.
- Now I have been taking a series of lecture called Victorian Art since the beginning of this term, and week by week I'm getting interested in the paintings drawn during the era. Then, this experience made me head to Tate Britain at last on January 23rd. I took the bus no. 436 from Paddington to Victoria station first. Then, I transferred to no. 24 bus to Pilmlico. When I arrived at the Pimlico station, I walked to the gallery. It took about one hour in total. The admission was free. When I saw the original of J. E. Millais's Ophelia (in the right below, from Wikimedia) for the first time in my life, I got really excited indeed. In my class, I had already learned about his Christ in the House of his Parents, so I think I could appreciate the painting very much. I'm in the reading week now, but the Gallery visit for the class is going to be held tomorrow (on February 11th). Of course, I will go to the museum again to attend it, but this time I can look around the gallery with my lecturer's explanation.
- "Record snow cripples the capital. LONDON was paralysed by the heaviest snowfall in 18 years today - with more to come. / All the capital's buses were withdrawn, the Tube was badly hit and mainline trains and flights were cancelled. / Hundreds of thousands of commuters either stayed at home or took hours to get to work, many trudging through the six inches of snow that fell over-night." (Free Lite, London, Monday, 2 February 2009, p.1)
- I was waken up from my nap by the noise outside around 5pm on Sunday 1st February. My room faces the Square in front of the dormitory. Every night I can hear someone talking around there over cigarettes late at night. Smokers are not allowed to enjoy themselves inside the hall. So at first I thought that they were just excited about the subject of their chatting. I was in a bit bad mood because they had disturbed my sleep. Then, since couldn't go on any longer, I got up and started preparing for my dinner. Even after I finished eating, their noisy conversation louder than usual was still annoying me. So I opened the curtain to make sure what was going on. But what I saw first was the scenery I had never expected. Yes, it was the snowy Square. Although I had been aware that it would snow on Sunday through the weather forecast, I didn't take it seriously, or I think I didn't believe in that information. That's why I was really impressed with the heavy snow. Then, I could understand why they were so noisy; the vociferous fellows were playing snowballs fight outside! Probably, the spectacle snow scape soothed me. I didn't care about their cries after that.
- On Monday morning, I went out with my camera so that I didn't miss this rare opportunity to shoot snowy London. I saw lots of weird snowmen at Hyde Park as well as beautiful landscapes. They were not like the one in the photo above. I was really satisfied with the stroll of the day because I could take some interesting pictures, which I'm going to upload in later entries. For now, here I'd like to leave the weather report of BBC Breakfast news this morning.
