Learning about London

In the past few days, I have tried to get to know London better, mainly through food.  Here are some pictures of my explorations:

Sun Chips are Sun Bites (and are awesome)

Chocolate covered cookies need better names:

This yogurt flavor exists:

There are tons of neighborhoods where there are just rows of white houses:

Even their malls have very elaborate carvings and statues in front:

Kensington Gardens, the huge park that I walk through to lab every day, has a lot of interesting landmarks, but is mostly flat grassland:

Next adventure:
I decided to attend the BBC Proms on Monday night, since my work hasn't really begun yet.  The Proms is an 8 week summer season of daily classical music concerts and other events (like pop concerts) that started back in 1895.  Apparently a neat thing to do is called "promming", where you stand in line the day of the concert and you buy tickets for £5.00 and stand instead of sit for 2 hours.  I started lining up at 4:45pm (the concert started at 7:30...)

 It started raining, what a surprise:

This place is very historic, Verdi conducted here!

 The concert hall is very grand, and the arena standing area is literally next to the stage:

 Bring out the piano and the final ovation:

For the curious, the program was:

• Borodin

  • Prince Igor (24 mins)
    overture; Polovtsian Dances

• Prokofiev

  • Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor (32 mins)
• INTERVAL (People around me sat down and starting drinking beer and eating roast chicken and ice cream, a very classy picnic.)

• Edward Cowie

  • Earth Music I – The Great Barrier Reef (c9 mins)
    BBC Commission, World Premiere

• Tchaikovsky

  • Symphony No. 2 in C minor, 'Little Russian' (35 mins)

• Jean-Efflam Bavouzet piano
• BBC Philharmonic
• Gianandrea Noseda conductor

Going to the Proms was definitely on my wishlist coming to London, so I am very glad I got the experience, though standing the entire time was quite painful. 

Next time, a tour of Imperial College!