The neighborhood where I lived in London was pleasant, convenient, and full of streets—little ones lined with impossibly beautiful domestic architecture, and big ones with attractions from fantastic restaurants to curious little shops to Premier League football grounds. A great feature was the lovely and peaceful Brompton Cemetery, where I took enough pictures that it needed its own section, which I put in with Parks, since it was a lot like one. In general, it was a delightful place to be headquartered, and gave me many chances to appreciate this description of Anna Quindlen's, in Imagined London, even though I didn't read the book until I got home:

You can see larger versions of these photos, plus some more, in this Flickr set.

The first two photos below, here, are of my street, near my flat. Finborough Road makes a V with Ifield Road just a ways north of the flat, and the funky little Finborough Theatre fits into the point of the V. I wish we'd had time to go to a play at the theatre. You'd think, with it being so convenient, that we would have, but it just didn't work out.

Below these shots are views of streets nearby: Redcliffe Square on the left and an unidentified street between the flat and the office on the right.

My office, and the neighborhood where the students' housing was located, was even more upscale than where I lived, as it is very close to Hyde Park. On the left below is a shot of the gorgeous street the students lived on—Queen's Gate Terrace. (As opposed to Queen's Gate, Queen's Gate Mews, etc.—what makes looking for an unfamiliar address in London so delightful!) On the right is a look past the main Queen's Gate street down Prince Consort Road. So many royal street names are around here, I presume, due to the proximity to the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall (Albert being the Prince Consort that is being memorialized).

Here are a couple more glimpses into streets between my office and Hyde Park. I rambled around this area a lot since it was such a pleasant place to walk. Also easy to get lost in! I believe the picturesque little alley v-ing off from the main street on the left is Canning Passage. What incredibly cool but tiny flats must exist in the building at the tip of this V! On the right is a cluster of traffic signs, an example of why I was so glad I never had to drive in London. The one that says parking for "Diplomatic cars only" is appropriate since there are lots of embassies located in this neighborhood. And isn't "give way," not surprisingly, more poetic than "yield"?

I'm rather generously expanding the borders of "my neighborhood" to include further reaches of Kensington Road than I would normally like to cover on foot. Although I walked a lot of the distance at one time or another. On the left the attractive rust-colored building is Harrod's. On the right is an icon of a different sort a good bit west of Harrod's, at the other end of Hyde Park: Whole Foods Kensington. I never shopped there but it was a rather nice reminder of home should I have needed any organic something or other. And in the middle is an unidentified side street in the Kensington area, where it certainly would be nice to reside.

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