A few thoughts on London!

The Thames flowed strongly through London with monotonous regularity, past the Houses of Parliament standing majestic in a dignified & glorious history, with Westminster Abbey opposite, resplendent, where kings & queens are buried, statesmen & poets have found their final resting places, where treasured paintings hang, where British pageantry & coronations have adorned the centuries for a thousand years. The river flowed under Westminster Bridge & Big Ben strikes the exact time, as it looks down on a busy, bustling London & continued under Waterloo, Black Friars & Tower Bridges gracing its banks. The Tower of  London stood steeped with a dark bloody history, of royalty shut up to die, princes disappearing without trace, murders & mayhem,  mournful of the deaths on Tower Green, built by the Conqueror in eleventh century England.
The underground trains almost constantly ran, criss-crossing all under London, deeply ensconced in the deep dark & curved tunnels, where a wind of train line smell & squealing brakes pushes out in front of the approaching trains, blowing onto the platforms, where hurrying commuters & visitors crowd into the carriages day after airless days.

St Paul's Cathedral, symbol of hope & strength, sits proud near Ludgate Hill, upon which site an earlier St. Paul's existed until the Great Fire of 1666. Sir Christopher Wren's masterpiece is magnificent in all its exquisite architectural design, reaching high up to the beautifully adorned dome in all its finery, with the Whispering Gallery winding around the lower part, descending to the illustrious space below.
Red buses, black cabs & the constant trail of cars, stopped & started as they swept around Piccadilly, curved up Regent Street, drove by Trafalgar Square with its fountains & Gallery, travelling past monuments & mews, passing palaces, parks & museums, endlessly going in ever increasing circles. The few cyclists daringly squeezed past double decker buses & wound in & out the constant London traffic.

Near the financial center is the 'Inside Out Building', Lloyds of London, the large insurance institution with its radical architecture dominating Lime Street. Clipboard & briefcase suits meet in the street to discuss the markets, hurry up staircases back from a prolonged business lunch, or catch lifts up & down the outside of the building. All in contrast to the mounted Horse Guards who exercise daily in the streets of London, where Henry VIII played at tilting near St.James's Park, Number 10 Downing Street & Whitehall, scenes of annual events.

London weather varies from the foggy damp in November, when the leaves have almost fallen, some snowy days in the depths of a dark winter, to the sticky heat of the summer where people laze around in the parks, lunching under the trees that weep their branches beside lakes & ducks mingle on the water. Rain can cascade & drench the weary wanderer & busy filled streets, the history will continue & all things British & London will always be London.