I’m having a lovely “in between Russia and meeting Vanessa” interlude, and have so far enjoyed a couple of days in Helsinki (which I have a bad habit of spelling ‘Helskinki’), then almost a week in Edinburgh followed by this week in London.
I thought you needed to know that in Edinburgh, apart from a pretty cool castle on a supremely difficult-to-assault hill, they have quite a number of statues of local luminaries. I took a photo of this one especially for all my electrical engineering friends. See… I haven’t forgotten you!
(It’s James Maxwell, in case you can’t read it off the plinth in the photo.)
Other than take daggy Engineering Idol photos of statues, I enjoyed wandering about in Edinburgh and it was an excellent choice of location for a few days of relaxing – thanks to all who recommended it to me on facebook!
On the way back to London I stopped in York for the day where I visited York Minster, a handy chocolate festival that just happened to be in town, and the National Railway Museum.
And now I’m in London town, enjoying skipping about the monopoly board and being generally touristy. It was wonderful to be able to join the lovely crew at Trinity Church Islington for an Easter Sunday service. Yesterday I caught the 
changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, learned all kinds of interesting things at the War Rooms and Winston Churchill museum (for example – did you know he was awarded a Nobel Prize for literature?!), then caught the 5pm sung Evensong service at Westminster before catching a red bus home. And today I went on a tour of the Lord’s Cricket Ground, which was being spit-polished to its best for the start of the county season tomorrow. It was very exciting! (and even from here I can hear some of you agreeing, and many more of you rolling your eyes.)
More retrospective Russia updates to come… just need to find some time in between all the sight-seeing activites!
anna's adventures 
Never mind the engineers, fancy finding the WIZARD EXPRESS – fabulous!! and visiting Lords – also fabulous.
Sounds as if you came upon some beautiful services too, in historic churches.
And no, I didn’t know that Winston Churchill had won a Nobel Prize, so we’re learning a lot of things from your fantastic Blog.
Not long now till you see Vanessa – exciting!!! Love, Mum xxx
Hi Anna,
Awesome choice of statue 🙂
I’m so impressed that you got a picture of him!
Keep safe 🙂
Alan
Thought you’d enjoy that one 🙂
I found it interesting that Winston Churchill had been a POW.
I also found the war rooms very fascinating – What a place to run the allied war effort from! even more interesting (and very british) to finsih the war, walk out, lock the door and never come back for 50 odd years.
So true! Right down to the bloke who’d left his sugar ration hidden in his desk drawer.
I loved the map room – especially the huge map covering one wall with all the pin holes in it where they tracked the progress of allied convoys across the Atlantic throughout the war…