A not so lazy Sunday

Our Sunday began as most of them have with a visit to All Souls Church in Langham Place, London.  I know I did a post on the church earlier, but it's pretty much become our church home while we're here.  Hope has enjoyed the children's program on Sunday morning and Sherry and I are energized by the great music, the incredible multi-cultural atmosphere and the solid biblical preaching.  So we've basically been Anglicans for our time here in London.


After church we made a visit to the Spitalfields Market.  It's yet another of the many street markets that show up in London (think mini-versions of Canton, Texas but with more emphasis on clothing and food).  We ate crepes at a cool little cafe right on the edge of the market and then spent a couple of hours looking around.  Sometimes there are some real deals at these places (Hope actually found a London T-Shirt for one pound), though there's also a lot of junk available.

By the way, the Spitalfields area was the hangout of a rather famous Londoner--Jack the Ripper.

Spitalfields Market

After the market, we hopped the tube back across town to wind down in the park.  However, Sundays are often difficult days to get around in London by tube--they do a lot of their maintenance work on Sunday.  We were headed to St. James Park, but we had to get off in Green Park--which is adjacent to it.  This led us to an extra visit--in between the two parks is Buckingham Palace.  I think we have now established our credentials as non-tourists.  This was our first visit to BP since we arrived.  We probably will have to come back and catch a changing of the guard ceremony before we leave, though.

The Queen Victoria Monument in the background

After our visit to the palace, we slipped into St. James Park, bought some ice cream and joined the throngs of Londoners on the grass.  Sunny days bring Londoners out to the parks in droves.  We've seen that in the small parks around us and in the larger parks like Green Park and St. James.  There were a lot of people around the park, mostly just soaking up the sun and enjoying a lazy day.

 The pictures below give an idea of just how beautiful St. James park is.  The London parks are all brilliant with flowers of all kinds of colors and arrangements.  They also use the combination of green space, water and flowers to create beautiful settings, often with the iconic pictures of London in the background (note the London Eye showing up below).