Museums, Parks and Banksy in London

Today I walked more than any other day of my whole trip, at least that's what my pedometer says :-)

Since I didn't know exactly what the program for today would look like in the morning, I spontaneously decided to visit Madame Tussauds. Once again, my path led past Buckingham Palace, which was a silly idea because I didn't want to see the changing of the guards, but unfortunately a huge crowd of people did. So I took charge and led the guards away, leaving the whole crowd waiting in vain :-D

Along the way, I found two more Banksy artworks, although the second one is unfortunately blocked by a black wall and is no longer visible. In general, most of his artworks in London are poorly preserved or no longer accessible and are extremely scattered, so I don't make too much effort to find them here.

Arriving at Madame Tussauds, there were so many people there that I didn't even want to squeeze myself in... Since Madame Tussauds is located almost right next to Baker Street, I took a short detour to the Boating Lake where I had been before leaving London. Then I passed by the Sherlock Holmes Museum again, which had even more visitors than last time. London seems to have a lot more tourists than a month ago.

My next stop was Hyde Park, where you can clearly see the extent of the lack of rain. In Hyde Park itself, there are not only dead lawns but also the Reformers Tree, which is no longer a tree at all, a huge collection of floating oil barrels, and the Albert Memorial.

After the beautiful and enormous Hyde Park, I had a longer visit to the London Science Museum. Just when I thought I had seen the entire museum, I realized that I had only seen about a third. Yes, the museum is really big, interesting and pretty much up to date everywhere!

Since the weather here is so nice, I crossed the Thames via the Albert Bridge and visited Battersea Park. The park is not as big as Hyde Park, but it is even more diverse in terms of plant diversity and design. The people of London do a lot of sports here. From jogging to football, tennis, cricket, volleyball, yoga, gymnastics, skateboarding, and various martial arts, you can find everything except cycling, which is not allowed in many parts of the park. The small lake in the park is really beautiful and the small covered benches in the park have their charm. In addition, the London Peace Pagoda is located in the park, right on the banks of the Thames. The only downside is the flight route to one of the airports directly over the park, so a plane flies over every few minutes.

On the way back via the Chelsea Bridge, there was a beautiful sunset.