London

Before our work trip to South Sudan, I needed to spend Monday and Tuesday in the Arup London office, mostly to prep.  I flew on a red eye Friday night from Orlando which landed early Sat morning at Gatwick.  I had the weekend to play and site see before a busy couple work days, and then it was off to Nairobi for transfer to Juba, South Sudan!  

This post includes some of the highlights from the London adventure:

Landing in cold London!  Our plane was a big 747 -- first time for me I think on one of these bad boys

Got my Gatwick UK stamp, woohoo!

Took the train into the city, found my hotel, and a colleague met me and took me to the Arup HQ,  They own two buildings, the green one on the right, and the one with the elaborate facade on the left.

The interior of the Arup office:

After a night out on the town by myself, I put on my running shoes, my jacket + scarf, and put in my headphones and set out for a jogging tour of the city.  It was really really cold, and i was brimming with excitement over being in London, so jogging everywhere was awesome.

Buckingham palace

cruised over to Westminster Abby and said hi to Big Ben

 Cool video of the area and of the London Eye, which was the next stop!

Took a cruise up the London Eye, one ticket buys you one slow (~15 min?) revolution.  It was great.

More London Eye...

After the London Eye, I set out down the river, and quickly came upon a street performer with quite a crowd around him.  I stood towards the back layer of crowd just trying to figure out what all the hooplah was about, right as the street performer pulls 4 tennis balls out of his bag.  He locked eyes with me, and I thought, "oh no".  He then called me out and threw the ball over the bulk of the crowd and to me.  Damnit!  haha  so had to go into the middle of the crowd and participate in his show.  He made all 4 of us introduce ourselves, and then do dances for everyone.  haha.  no video of that unfortunately.  He made us do the grand finale, which was the four of us laying in a square, with upper backs on the knees of the guy behind us.   He then took away the supports we used to get into position, and we all held the positions, suspended above some poor kid that he also picked out, who would've gotten crushed if we'd fallen!  Anyway, that was that and then it was over and I continued on.  10 minutes later further down the line, a group of Italian tourists asked for my picture, as they already knew me -- Chris, from Los Angeles.

Checked out the Tate museum.

 Dad, recognize this photo?  It's on the refinery in the South Bay that we passed when we went to a Galaxy Game once.   You said it would make a great photo...you were right!

Another one.  smoke stacks from a power plant.

Several of the buildings in this color-coded key were Arup projects.  Including Millenium Bridge and the Gherkin,

 took the metro home and then spent the rest of the night making the cruise iMovie.

Monday was busy working at the office.
Tuesday was a busy morning, and then me and Hayley set out to London Heathrow airport for our flight to Nairobi!