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London baby!

Yes, I knew it would be soon before I travelled to the beautiful capital of the United Kingdom again – by train this time and for the third time this year. Reason now was my uncle Willem (dad’s twin brother) winning the trip and needing an ‘experienced London guide’.
 

Me! Yeah, the few times someone asks me to find the way, I have to cherish eh?! But to be fair, I seriously do know my way around there by now, although the tube stations make that easy for anyone. It’s been a while since I did the touristic route though, so it sounded like a plan. Armed with my Oyster card and my lovely friend Graham’s photo camera, we explored England’s largest city last weekend.
 

The trip included Guest Tickets to the World Premiere (and UK’s largest ever!) of Disney’s Prince of Persia – The sands of time! I’ll admit: I’d never heard of the film, or the game it is based on for that matter, before and neither did I really know any of the actors. We went without expectations and found ourselves on a long red carpet, together with the actors and filmmakers, like you often see on TV indeed. The people behind the fences with their cameras and pieces of paper for autographs reminded us it was literally not for everyone to be on our side of those fences. Although I wasn’t ‘star struck’ at that moment, I did leave feeling impressed by the ‘stars’. I liked the way they did their interviews and what they made of this film. It’s truly a good one: it has a great (romantic) story, it’s funny and has a lot of cool action stunts. When it’s in cinema’s I’m going to see it again and I can definitely advise everyone to do the same! Obviously, we weren’t allowed to take any pictures there, but I gathered there have been lots of them in the news worldwide.
 

I did take a lot of pictures of the rest of the time we spent in London. And although the Sun wasn’t always very helpful, there was the great surprise of Hyde Park and surrounding areas being an open air museum! It was The Elephants Parade colouring the streets of London. Now, I’ve loved these animals for as long as I can remember, which probably started with my first stuffed animal being an elephant. So I thought the first two elephants we saw were very beautiful and creative, without realising we’d bump into approximately 70 more of them. After we did see a few more, I immediately decided I wanted to collect them and the artwork reminded me of a school assignment I had to do once. If I had to do it again, I would certainly choose to work with this idea in my class! Sometimes we’d see just one on a corner; sometimes there were a bunch and I was one of the kids shouting: “Oh look, there are more over there!” They were popular; lots of people were collecting them with their cameras too and I haven’t seen one kid not touching them.
 

And the best part? There’s a charity behind it, to help the real stunning creatures. I found their website when I was home and learned the initial idea came from the Netherlands! And: the parade started today in Emmen as well. So that’s one plan for my next holiday! Here’s a selection of a few London Elephants…
 








 
Tell me said the Elephant

Tell me brothers if you can

Why all the world is full of creatures

Yet we grow in fear of man

Tell me said the Elephant

Tell me why this has to be

We have to run from man the hunter

Never safe and never free
 

From: The Elephant Song by Kamahl

2 Comments

  1. Graham | Posted May 14, 2010 at 10:03 am | Permalink

    Aww, what lovely elephants, and they support such an important cause. I signed up!

  2. Graham | Posted May 14, 2010 at 10:16 am | Permalink

    And I love the pictures too ;)

3 Trackbacks

  1. By Tweets that mention Hanny’s Voorwerp | Official website of discoverer Hanny van Arkel » London baby! -- Topsy.com on May 13, 2010 at 11:47 pm

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Hanny van Arkel. Hanny van Arkel said: Here are more Elephant Parade pics by the way: http://bit.ly/cknt6J [...]

  2. By Credigy Services Corp [ Shocking Cruelty to Elephants – Vanishing Giants ] on May 14, 2010 at 12:27 am

    [...] Hanny's Voorwerp | Official website of discoverer Hanny van Arkel … [...]

  3. [...] a fan ever since I more or less accidentally bumped into the colourful collection of art elephants in London last year. [...]

 

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