Regent's Park

Day 31

A few observations:

• British girls have long hair. And it's okay if your curls are a bit frizzy (probably something about the humidity)
• Flat shoes are in. For everyone.
  
• British dancing is much like American dancing, but a bit less enthusiastic.
• The dance music is more technoey and less hip-hop-ish. My bunkmate Kelsy described it as "techno rock hip-hop techno" if that helps.
• The Brits make no distinction between jam and jelly (they still have both words, they just mean different things than our words).
• I'm rather suspicious that they don't have biscuits.
• Apparently, they think peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are disgusting. Which is funny, since that's like the staple of the American bag lunch. I think it might have something to do with their awful excuse for peanut butter.
• I'm told that you can actually find root beer here, in select locations (such as Sainsbury).
• Almost no one has that classic "British accent".
• Half the people on the street aren't even speaking English
• London dogs are very well behaved.
• It's not necessarily that the chocolate here is better than chocolate you can get in the States, it's just that the regular chocolate here is like the expensive specialty chocolate there.
• They think it's perfectly normal to talk about buildings lasting for hundreds of years instead of decades (at St. Bart's last Sunday, they told us that they fully intended the new altar rail they're installing to be there for the next 200 years. But then again, the chuch is 600 years old already).
• In America, any man wearing a scarf for reasons of fashion would be called a pansy; In Britain, it's not only acceptable, but hot.
• Lots of people use umbrellas
• The public transportation in London is awesome.
• Some of them like Americans
  

Today I went to Regent's Park. I'm really liking all the parks that London has. Regent's Park was designed by the famous architect John Nash, and was originally slated to have a much grander design, and a lot more private villas, and a palace for the king-to-be (the regent, hence the name Regent's Park). But as usual, time, finances, and the capricious whims of royalty interfered. Regent's Park is still lovely, but in a more natural, less grand sort of way.

However, pieces of the original plan were completed before the change in plans. This is an enormous arc of buildings with one continuous face, called Park Crescent, designed by John Nash. I don't even want to know how much it costs to live there.
I love London streets. They look like they're straight out of a movie, with their cute little street lamps, trees, paving stones, and black wrought iron fences.

This is another part of Nash's plan that was actually completed, called Cumberland Place. Note the blue pediment with Greek style figures. Originally, the plan was to have several strips of buildings on different sides of the park with different colored pediments.
One of the perks of being able to afford to live there is the lovely landscaping.
The British are very particular about proper doggy walking ettiquette.
Inside Regent's Park
Football (that's soccer) is a big deal over here, as evidenced by the many football fields they have set up in this public park.

And the fact that they actually have signs specifying that you can't play football in some parts of the park (obviously, this was not next to the football fields).I'm not sure what this was for, but they had a bunch of them built along the river edge.

Cool looking brown bird. I have no idea what it is, and I've never seen it anywhere else. They have a lot of different birds in Regent's Park.

This bird is also cool.Waterfall, yay!
One of the boating ponds in the Park.
The kiddie boating pond.
I think this is the bandstand, but I'm not actually sure.

Definitely not native to London.

I thought they only had these signs on boxes. Also, that arrow does not point up. What this sign is actually trying to say is, "you're underground, and the stairs the the surface are that way."