Kensington Gardens and Kensington Palace

On Tuesday I went to Kensington Gardens and Kensington Palace. The gardens are absolutely beautiful. I wasn't able to take pictures inside the palace, but here are some from around the grounds.

The gardens on the side of the palace.

The front gates to the palace.

The pond in Kensington Gardens, with a swan!

I walked down to the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain. It is a beautiful water feature where you can wade in the water. Here are some pictures:

The Albert Memorial on the edge of the park.

In the park, you can ride horses and take riding lessons (which are ridiculously expensive) I happened to walk along one of the trails while walking around.

Paris!

A group of us went to Paris over our first 3 day weekend! We had tons of fun. Here are some of the pictures from the weekend. I took over 400 pictures in the three days, so these are just a small sample. I have posted a bunch of the pictures on Facebook, here are links to the albums. You should be able to view them from the links even if you don't have a Facebook account.

Album 1 and Album 2

At the train station...way too early in the morning.

During our first walking tour.

Church at the highest point in Paris.

In the red light district.

On Saturday we encountered rain, but we still got to see a lot and get some good pictures. We spent the day walking through Paris and seeing most everything we wanted to.

We waited in line for quite a while (probably took over 2 hours in total) to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower, it was so worth it!

We walked to the Louvre to see the grounds and the statues outside. We stayed there to watch the Eiffel Tower light show at 10:00.

Sparkly lights!

On Sunday morning we got up early to get in line at the Louvre. The first Sunday of the month they have free admission. The line was kind of long, but as soon as they opened it went quickly. Here are some of the many pictures from the Louvre.

The Mona Lisa.

Heading to Notre Dame.

Inside Notre Dame.

At Luxembourg Gardens near France's Senate building on our walking tour.

Elephant Parade!

This week I went to the viewing of the Elephant Parade in London. This is a fundraiser and awareness campaign for the endangered Asian elephant. There have been over 250 around London as apart of this campaign. This week they were brought together as they go up to auction this weekend.

The elephants were gathered at the Royal Chelsea Hospital, for the Chelsea Pensioners. It was a beautiful facility and grounds to walk through and also was able to walk through a few beautiful neighborhood to get there.

Beautiful flowers along some townhomes in the Chelsea neighborhood.

First you have to love how small some European cars are, then you have to wonder how is that car going to get out of the parking spot!

Finally at Royal Hospital Chelsea!

There are so many awesome elephants, I don't know how to choose a favorite. The elephants were painted in so many different ways; artistically, like animals, iconic London, food, pop culture, and so many more. I don't even know how to narrow down the selection for this post...but here are some of the many pictures (like 120 pictures) I took while walking with the elephants.

I finally found them!

Me and the elephant herd.

Strawberries!!

A black taxi elephant!

I loved how the elephants could be painted to look so much like other animals.

Just so you know, I did get many strange looks from people as I was taking pictures of myself with elephants. Let me also tell you how challenging it is to get myself and the elephant in a picture I am taking of myself...luckily I have some real photography skills!