HDE Advent Calendar 2016

“one day - one person - one blog post”, from December 1st - 25th

HDE Advent Calendar Day 3: A Digital Tour of London

Hello everyone! This is Alice, an intern in the Cloud Product Development team. I’ve been living in London for the past 4 years so I thought I’d take you all on a digital tour of my favourite parts of the city...

 

First up: The Barbican. Mostly famous for its tall apartment blocks, there are also cinema screens, cafés and a tropical greenhouse within the same complex. A lot of people don’t like the brutalist architecture but I personally think it’s fantastic!

Sources: left, right

 

One of my favourite galleries to wander around is the Tate Britain - it's not as well known as the Tate Modern so tends to be quieter, and it has a wider range of artistic styles and media on display. A lot of museums and galleries open late on every first Thursday of every month. This is my favourite time to go to the Natural History Museum - you can drink beer and cocktails as you look at the dinosaurs!

Sources: left, right

 

London is a great place to live if you're into live music. There are some pretty cool venues as well; I've been to gigs in churches, warehouses, a brewery and a veterans' club..! 

f:id:alicepalace:20161201191023j:plain

Source: mine :)

 

When the weather is nice (which happens sometimes! sort of!) I like to go for a walk along the Lea River. A fair number of people live in houseboats in the canals - a cheap way to live if you're not too attached to electricity!

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Source: mine :)

 

Other great green spaces to go are Hampstead Heath for its huge trees and wide open spaces, and Richmond Park for the deer:

Sources: top, bottom

  

It's hard to tell from the above photo, but there are LOTS of deer. To demonstrate, here is a video that shows what happens when you set a dog loose in Richmond park...

 

There are also many interesting areas in the suburbs. Below is a map based on the 2011 census, showing the 2nd most spoken languages (after English) in London.

Source

  

This means it's possible to buy authentic food and clothing from all over the world! The area I live in at the moment is home to Jewish, Turkish, Caribbean, Latin American and Polish communities, so I can find great Challah bread, baklava, ackee, arepas and kielbasa, all within walking distance. I could write a whole blog post just on food - Londoners are really spoilt for choice!

 

And that's about it, I hope you enjoyed this whirlwind tour! Here are some cool instagram accounts to follow if you want to see more:

@ecolephoto

@h_cato

@se_london

@alices_snaps (ok this is me, hence the bad photos 😛 )

 

Thanks for reading!