Lloyds of London

It seems my automatic posted didn't work! Apologies for prolonging the suspense. I spent Open House London at Lloyds of London, an amazing 1980s concrete structure that was just made a listed building. Here we see "The Room" where insurance brokers meet do their thing.

Open House: view to St Paul's

The wonderful Open House weekend lets the public visit hundreds of buildings not normally open to the public. I thought about waiting in a 4-hour queue to get inside the Gherkin, but the rain today put me off.

Saturday, however, was gorgeous and I visited two very cool, very famous buildings. This a view from the first. Anyone wanna guess what it is?

morning moon

Caught this nice view of a morning moon on my way to work last week. I couldn't take my eyes off it -- I try to really savor this clear, blue London days because I know they will be few and far between in a few weeks.

Sunset over Olympic Park

Setting sun and airplane trail in Olympic Park.

I managed to snag tickets to Paralympics Athletics on Friday. The atmosphere was incredible. We were in a tiny minority, waving our American flags, surrounding by a sea of British flags.

orbit, meet mcdonald's

Two symbols of London 2012. More from Olympic Park tomorrow.

Art?

I went to an "unofficial" public art exhibition in Finsbury Park this weekend. Artists had deposited works around the park without permission and then publicised the event on Facebook. I got there early, as was encouraged, so I could see the art before it was confiscated by park authorities. This is one of the pieces and, I confess, I don't get it. An Olympic flag thrown into the bushes where parkgoers normally chuck their rubbish? What can it meeeeaaaan?

Also, the park authorities must have Facebook because I saw them inspecting some of the artworks on my way out of the park, though they had left them in place as of this afternoon.