On London Parks

In a post last night about the 1999 movie NOTTING HILL, I mentioned it has one of my all-time favorite closing shots, set in a London park:


One of the things I like about the movie is that it captures how parks are used and enjoyed in London. After living there for a semester, my daughter has said that the parks and "green space" are the thing she might miss most about London. Once the snow disappeared and the weather warmed up, she liked to take a book to a park for a couple hours on sunny days. We have small "pocket parks" in our housing tracts here, but it's just not the same as having large, lovely parks easily accessible in so many places, all over London.

This is a London park I photographed somewhere between the British Museum and the British Library in May:


And here's the late afternoon crowd at the Green Park, near Buckingham Palace, the same day:


This is a shot my daughter took during a picnic at Hyde Park this spring:


We can still visit the parks in photographs, but somehow it's just not the same as being there...

As a postscript, a stroll through the Notting Hill area is one of only a couple things on our "to do" list, along with seeing a West End show, which we ran out of time to do last May. That will be on the top of our list for next time!