Local wildlife

This not-so-little fella wandered into the middle of the city on Thursday! This is as close as I dared to get to a wild boar found in the little forest area across the road from my work on Thursday afernoon. He created quite a stir, with plenty of locals snapping away madly, and even tv camera crews in attendance.

Unfortunately the decision was made later that day to shoot him. Too dangerous to have him in the middle of a residential area and right by a school!

Alli xxx

Where am I?

Yep, couldn't be anywhere else but the thriving metropolis that is London. Jeroen and I just spent another extra long weekend staying with the lovely Ali in Shepherd's Bush :-)) This time we managed a 4 day weekend, giving us plenty of time to be tourists.

We squeezed in a visit to Buckingham Palace (which coincidentally included the Changing of the Guards!), saw Big Ben, 10 Downing Street, visited the Household Cavalry Museum and the Transport Museum, wandered through Covent Garden, browsed the stalls at Portobello Road market, and last but not least, went out to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. In between times we shopped for food at the local Shepherd's Bush market and cooked some yummy food.

The Household Cavalry Museum is right in the heart of Horse Guards and was only opened (by the Queen herself) in July last year. The Household Cavalry are basically the personal bodyguards of the Queen, and the museum is a great behind the scenes look at the work that the guys in red (and their horses) do on a daily basis. The museum itself is situated in the stables that are still used, and at different times of the day you will always see something going on. See the photo below of Jeroen trying on part of the Cavalry uniform ;-)

The recenly revamped Transport Museum was also really interesting. Great information on the development of the London Underground, and lots of levers to pull & buttons to push :-)

And for those of you who didn't realise, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich is where the world's prime meridian (ie 0 degrees longitude) is situated, and where Greenwich meantime stems from!! Cool huh? You can stand on the prime meridian (the red line you can see in the photos below) with one foot in the eastern and one foot in the western hemisphere!

All in all a busy weekend with lots of fun and sightseeing :-)

Alli xxx

Photos from London

Scarf day..

...at my work yesterday!

Well, sort of ;-) Yesterday our Asia Product Manager, Jeroen, (in the very front of the photo you see here) received about 100 silk scarves from one of our local agents somewhere in Asia! And here we all are posing with our new gifts :-)) These lovelies are just the staff that work in my building (one of three buildings we have at SNP).

Alli xxx