Outside St. Paul's.

There's a memorial just outside St. Paul's to London's firefighters and their efforts during the Blitz. 

Detail on the Dome at St. Paul's Cathedral. The most rare detail, for this time of year, is the blue sky. 

What a curiosity to find this tucked away on the LSE "campus," such as it is... 

On the Circle Line.  

Here's a drunken picture of me and my cousin Kathleen. We are at our cousin Adam's wedding, which took place last summer on one of the hottest days of the year. Seriously, it was so hot I had to drink an entire bottle of champagne. Photo courtesy: www.zilliax.ca.  

We Are Not Amused

Back in London just over a week now, after a too-short trip home and then an excursion to Hamburg, Germany to see my friend Bele and her family. I'd show you pictures, but my camera (err, rather, Al's rather expensive digital camera that he loaned me) died (not my fault, Al, I swear)...so I made the big splurge this weekend and bought another one because I don't know how I am supposed to get through another 5 months in London without taking any pictures. Once I figure out how to use the darn thing I'll start posting again.

Gjertrud and I are in the LSE library. On a Saturday. This is us turning over a new leaf and becoming diligent students. It won't happen again, I can pretty much guarantee. But we are happy to be back and making a good-faith attempt to study, if good-faith attempts include playing on blogs, looking at pictures and downloading music on ITunes thanks to the speedy connections at the library.

Tom Ridge, soon to be ex-Director of Homeland Security for the U.S., was at LSE yesterday and gave a speech called "Secure Borders, Open Frontiers" or some such nonsense like that. I couldn't get tickets so instead I stayed outside and counted police officers. In our little two square feet of space that is the LSE campus, I counted 23 Bobbies. I wonder whether LSE got its own special terrorist color alert because he was here? I hope not, an orange alert just WOULDN'T go with my outfit.

Home Again, Home Again...

...and now that I've semi-recovered from jet lag, I decided it was high time to post these pictures from my recent weekend in Palermo, mostly to escape the wrath of my Uncle Rell who put me on a deadline to get these up. Even though I only spent four days there, I think Palermo may be the coolest place I've ever visited. I never thought I'd be interested in going to Italy, but from the minute we landed in Sicily, and I saw the water, and Mt. Etna, and we passed lemon and orange groves, I was hooked.

Palermo isn't a big tourist town, but Jen and I were welcomed wherever we went. A woman in a shop gave me a giant bag of pasta to take home to my parents. The wait staff at a restaurant where we ate dinner plied us with free appetizers and chocolates. People patiently repeated things slowly in Italian to make sure I understood them. I wandered around staring at buildings for days, camera in hand, and was never really bothered, except for extremely friendly Sicilian gentlemen. It was sunny and hot (in December! I love it!) and inexpensive...so I'd definitely recommend it to any Ryan Air enthusiast looking for a new destination.

Only home for another week, which makes me sad, but then I'm off on another jaunt, to Hamburg to visit my Bele for New Years' before returning to London...

Happy Holidays everyone!

To get to Palermo proper, we had to take a train from this absurdly clean underground station at Falcone Airport.  

This was taken from the corner of our street...we really were staying right in the middle of everything. 

The first place we visited was a church called San Giovanni Degli Eremiti, or St. John of the Hermits.  

The church was built some time in the 11th century, on top of the remains of an even more ancient mosque. It is the most "Arab" in architectural style of Palermo's cathedrals.  

San Giovanni was the first site we visited, and it was definitely the most beautiful.