Last weekend of summer

 nectarine pancakes / river boats / meadow picnic / brothers & sisters / summer drinks

Queen Mary's Gardens

Named after the wife of King George V, this garden in Regents Park has London's largest collection of roses - 12,000 roses in 85 beds. It makes for a pretty beautiful morning walk.

Abbey Road

The Beatles prepare to cross Abbey Road, 1969. Photo by Linda McCartney

It is not so easy to cross Abbey Road. It is a busy intersection. There are a good number of families risking the lives of their children by forcing them onto the zebra crossing for the photo opportunity. Me? I didn't even plan to cross the road. I was walking Michelle to a photo shoot in St. John's Wood. We were consulting the google map to find the photographer's studio and I noticed we were 1 block away from ABBEY ROAD. Sweetness, I am literally at the most famous crosswalk ever...rock n' roll history sightseeing with no prior planning.

With Michelle gone making modeling magic, I had resigned myself to the fact that I would not have a friend to photograph me crossing the road. I forged ahead fully fine with the photo-less experience. Turns out I did have my photograph taken - creepy surveillance-style - thanks to the Abbey Road Studio's Web Cam. They keep a log of people crossing the road for 24 hours. I watched myself cross that road a few times. Turns out I swing my left arm violently. Why didn't anyone tell me?

My beautiful sister is here

Life is more beautiful when Michelle is around. She is so funny, so sweet. She makes everything good. Roo was here in London hardly over 24 hours when she took me to the most beautiful place. We rode the District Line tube to the end of the line - Richmond. We walked through town to the river, through a meadow with grazing cattle, down a narrow footpath through berry bushes, up a hill for a picnic and then to perfect Petersham Nurseries for tea and coconut cake. Too good to be true - flowers, cake and my Roo.

Bilbao and its Guggenheim

Our LITE-BRITE hotel 

Basque Health Department Headquarters

 Baldosa de Bilbao pavement tile 

The Biscay Statutory Library

Jeff Koons' Puppy is  43 feet high, contains 25 tons of soil, 70,000 flowering plants and an internal irrigation system. 

Bilbao! Admittedly, all I knew about this city is in the Basque Country of Spain was what I had read about the Guggenheim. Well, that museum is definitely the centerpiece, but the city is filled with architectural gems and it is surrounded by green mountains and a river runs through it.  Apparently the river used to stink very badly and was lined with closed-down factories, but then that shiny museum came. The Guggenheim Bilbao, completed in 1997, and designed by Frank Gehry is an icon of the city's transformation from a declining industrial port. This icon also happens to be "the greatest building of our time" (according to Philip Johnson) Gosh.  It was interesting to think that our hotel with candy-colored widows, that Calatrava suspension bridge and those great green lawns and wide walk-ways along the river are all very new to a city that was founded in 1300.