Bordeaux

Arrived in Bordeaux on wednesday and have spent the last five days soaking up the culture of France. So far bordeaux has been fantastic with amasing architecture and glorious food apart from snails and frog legs, which I refuse to wast my taste buds on.
The only complaint would be that it is horrendously hot neerly as bad as Sydney with a 38 degree celcius day yesterday (sunday).
Here are some pictures of the sights around the streets.


The turtle, some one grafittied it after France beat Brasil in the soccer.


Inside the main cathedral.


The outside of the main cathedral.


Random archway.


Fountain with no water due to the hot weather.


Another fountain.


Self explanitory.

Last day in London

On the last full day I had in London I decided to set out and see a few Museums. The three that I got to were the Hunterian Museum, the Science museum and the Natural History Museum. The Hunterian Museum contans lots of disected human body parts and the skeletons of a lot of people with physical disorders and isn't too bad as long as you have a relatively robust stomach. The science museum on the other hand was quite awful mainly because it was full of horrible screaming little children and most of the displays were designed to cater to that clientelle although I still learnt quite a bit during my brief visit. However, the best museum by far was the Natural History museum.


Natural History Museum.

Here a few more random photos from London.


Bird


A nice monument.


A lovely statue.

Petworth

A day trip was made to Petworth to see some of the English countryside and also Petworth House, which is an old english manor with an impressive art collection.


Petworth house, with Timi and Mark in the fore ground.


The servants kitchen which was in a different building to the main kitchen. I didn't take any photos inside the main house as photographs were not allowed but just imagine the most amasingly opulent building you have ever been in and you would not be to far off.


A pheasant that was enoying the rainy weather.


There were thousands of little frogs around one of the lakes, they were so numerous that is was a challenge to avoid crushing them.


Some fallow deer that were in the park next to the house.

Other highlights in Petworth included going to the local pub and getting a beer and beef pie and chatting to the local barmaid about the manor. It turned out that despite entry being only a few pounds she had never visited in her 30 years of living in the village, which seems to be a fairly common phenomenon among the English peasantry.

Wildlife in England

Managed to take a few photos while wandering around some of the parks in London. The pictures are all of birds that were seen during the week and sadly I don't know the names of most of them but I'm sure Iain will be happy to tell you what they are if need be.



Some random tern that was flying around the Princess Dianna memorial, it had a black head and white body although that would be difficult to tell from this photo.


A great crested grebe swimming in the serpentine, which is a glorified puddle in Hyde park.


Moorhen enjoying the pristine natural environment of Hyde park.


Pond scum


There were lots of ducklings and goslings about.


Action shot.


Not enough zoom.


More ducks and a swan, therewas even a black swan cruising about on the lakes near Buckingham palace.


Pretty duck.

More London

A couple more photos from london.


One of many pubs around central London.


The british museum, it houses the rosetta stone, which was good to see.

More London 1

Here are a lot of photos from London with a brief description below each one.


The Tate Modern


The London Tower


Tower Bridge, luckily it opened just as we were wandering past.


London Skyline including the Gherkin, which is one of the few modern buildings that is quite beautiful.


Big Ben, I couldn't get it and the houses of parliment together in the one photo.


Westminster Abby


The changing of the Guards at Buckingham palace, you need to get there a hour early to get a good view but fortuitously we were.


Buckingham Palace

London

I arrived in London on the 22nd of June after an awful day long flight from Sydney. I have to say there is nothing pleasent at all about long haul flights. The movie selection was rather awful and the three that I bothered watching were King Kong, Failure to Launch and Match Point. Out of these three Match point was by far the best but only due to the negligible competition.
After arriving in London the first day was spent seeing the sights and trying to stay awake.
The Tate Modern was the highlight of the day and in particular the surealist section, which had paintings by Dali and Picasso that even a phillistine like myself could recognise. My favorite painting from the gallery being Ein klein nachtmusik by Dorothea Tanning. Other highlights included Carl Andre’s 'Equivalent VIII', which is really just a stack of 120 bricks.

Ein klein nachtmusik Plagarised from this site.

Also had a look at the St Pauls cathedral and saw my first tree rat.


St Pauls Cathedral


Tree Rat

Yet more Melbourne

Back for my fourth visit to Melbourne and probably my last work funded trip down there.
Results were rather average but I did spot a few new birds while going for a hungover wander.
Here are some average pictures from the trip.


Playing five hundred.


More cards.


Working?

Ebay worked

Yeah, I got my binoculars yesterday in perfect condition and extremely quickly considering they came all the way from the states via standard post.
But the best part is I saved about $300 AUD by buying them over the net rather than from a store here in australia.

Ebay continued...

Looks like my payment has been recieved and the binoculars are on the way. I'll try to keep the millions of readers of this blog updated with any further developments in the epic saga of my first ebay purchase as I'm sure you are quivering with anticipation, or at least I hope it is anticipation, of the final outcome.