Elephants in Hyde Park

The best thing about my google homepage, other than being able to read all your blogs from it, is that it shows me news headlines from the BBC. I think I've mentioned before that I don't watch or read much news these days, but the occasional headline is good, especially the ones that tell me about things that are happening in and around London. Like the one I saw yesterday about the elephants in Hyde Park that have been made from willow and set up in the park to raise awareness of the plight of the asian elephants. I don't need to explain the whole thing, I just wanna show you the photos, but you can read more info about the project here.

From what I can tell, they get moved around the park, meaning I didn't know exactly where to find them, other than 'Hyde Park', which isn't very helpful. I caught the bus, well actually a couple of buses, towards the park, but decided to get off at Kensington Gardens instead. Not too big a deal as the two are separated by nothing more than a road. As I walked in, I realised the palace looked different. Wondering what was going on, I headed towards it, my brain working overtime to try and figure out what was going on. And then it clicked - Princess Diana. Sure enough, there were flowers and posters all over the fence and front gate of the palace. There were plenty of people looking at them and even more kids sitting on the ground having what looked like an art lesson.






I then headed towards Hyde Park. Along the way I saw a shoe in a tree.



And then I saw the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, something I instantly remembered reading about and thinking it would be cool to visit, but which I had not had in mind when I set out for the day.



So of course I had to go and check it out. Every year, they commission someone to design a summer pavilion to be constructed next to the gallery. This one has a spiral walkway around the outside and inside is a mini arena area where they do talks and things some evenings.



As I walked past the Diana Memorial Fountain thing, I was quite disappointed to see this tree, with it's leaves already turning colour and starting to fall. It can't possibly be autumn when we never had summer - how depressing.



I finally found the elephants grazing near the end of the Serpentine. I've already showed you their photos. Then I went and found myself a place in the shade, where I had a snack and finished composing a blog post about renting (that I think belongs on our website, not here).



more photos on flickr, of course...