Call Me Mr. Hyde

Our next stop after the Tate Modern was a place we'd visited previously on the trip -- the Dr. Marten's store that had disappointed us earlier in the week. In the intervening days, I think my boyfriend came to the conclusion that the desire to have a pair of "souvenir London boots" that were literally guaranteed to last a lifetime outweighed the disappointment that the store's selection was less than epic.

He did end up finding a pair he liked (sorry, shoe fans -- I didn't think to snap a picture), and was anxious to start breaking them in. So after a brief stop back at our hotel so he could put them on, we decided to take a stroll through the famous Hyde Park. Though not as large as New York's Central Park, it is a truly beautiful space, home to several memorials and other points of interest. We saw several, though I only learned the names of many of them after the fact. For example, there was the "Weeping Beech" or "Upside-down Tree"...


...which is not only interesting from a distance, but has access for you to walk up under and inside it (which we did).

We snapped several "coffee table book worthy" pictures that are now among the rotating desktop images on my computer:



We continued until we reached the border between Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, then walked past the Albert Memorial on our way back to the hotel:


In all, it was probably more walking than one should do in a brand-new, unbroken-in pair of Doc Martens, but "no pain, no gain" I guess. Easy for me to say, as the pain wasn't mine.

Assuming you're up for a stroll, then London's parks offer plenty of amazing views. We could easily have made more of a planned outing of it and seen other specific things like the statue of Peter Pan or the Wellington Arch, but I think part of the park's appeal was that we weren't on a mission in going there. It was just a nice afternoon stroll through a beautiful park, the sort of thing I know I myself never make time for when I'm at home.