London Parks

According to Wikipedia The Greater London Urban Area is the second largest in the EU with a population of over 8 million, while London's metropolitan area is the largest in the EU with an estimated total population of between 12 and 14 million.
For a city of this size, London has a surprisingly large amount of green areas. Most of them belong to many parks.


The largest group of London parks is The Royal Parks, this year celebrating 160 years of existence.
There are 8 parks included in this largest group, together covering almost 2,000 hectares of ground. The Royal Parks of London are lands originally owned by the UK monarchy. They used them for recreation (mostly hunting) of the royal family. There are public rights of way across the land but public access still depends on the grace and favour of the Crown. A typical British concept, if you ask me.

Royal Parks of London include the following 8 parks:

• Bushy Park,


• Green Park,


• Greenwich Park,


• Hyde Park,


• Kensington Gardens,


• Regent's Park,


• Richmond Park,


• St. James's Park.

Each one of the listed parks has something special to offer. Let me mention just a few highlights:

• Hyde Park seems to be the most popular due to its location and many events taking place there,


• Green Park can also get pretty crowded due to the vicinity of Buckingham Palace,


• the north side of Regent's Park is where the London Zoo is located,


• Richmond Park is so huge there are deer roaming around free.

Apart from those mentioned above there are also many other parks and green spaces located in the London area. Many are well worth visiting, so I suggest you do your research while planning your trip to London.

During a recent visit to London I had time to visit a few of the mentioned parks. Additional information regarding the most prominent and famous of London parks - London Hyde Park and its surroundings will be introduced in one of my upcoming posts.

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Google+ invites available

I have recently tried out a new communication channel provided by Google. It also provides support for mobile devices, allowing you to stay in touch with your social circles at all times. It is quite a useful tool for travellers like me, being on the road a lot.
You have probably heard at least something about it - everybody is talking about this new social network. Google+ is Google's latest attempt to face-off Facebook. Company's other recent tries in this field have been only partially successful.
gTalk was widely accepted as a part of Gmail, but has never grown into a serious competition for Skype.
Google Buzz (and Google Wave before it) was also announced as a revolutionary communication platform, but has never really picked up.

With Google+ Google is trying to finally make a breakthrough in the field of social networks. It is still too early to predict their success but the introduction phase of the product was done brilliantly. In just under 3 weeks Google+ adopted over 10 million users - at the moment there are already more then 20 million. That definitely is something worth bragging about, but it is still not all that much compared to Facebook's 750 million current users.

However stunning this might be, it is still just the first battle won in a long war against Facebook.
Will this prove to be the Facebook killer Google is looking for? I think it is still early in the game to say something like that... in my opinion Facebook is not leaving anytime soon.

If you haven't tried it out yet, all this hype should be a reason for at least some curiosity. If you are looking for an invite for Google+ it is your lucky day!

Invites are reserved for my readers only. If you haven't done it already, you should join other followers of Travel Photo Blogging through Google Friend Connect (slide to the bottom of page) or follow us using your favourite social network (top right).
After you have done that, you simply leave a comment to this post and I will send you an invite as soon as possible.

A free bonus after receiving an invite from me is that you can also add me to one of your social circles and we can test this thing together.

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British Museum eyeOpener Tours

British museum is one of many London museums with free admission. It would be worth visiting it even if it wasn't free of charge.

It houses artefacts from all periods and from all over the world. Even if you think of its collection as a heap of stolen goods by the British empire, it is still worth taking a peek.


The museum holds a total of around 6,000,000 artefacts. This is a number hard to imagine, but when you spend a day or two in this institution and fruitlessly try to see everything on display you begin to understand the scale of things... there are less then one percent of artefacts on display at any given moment!

If this is not enough to convince you into visiting, there is more free stuff to make you change your mind.
There are short eyeOpener tours introducing different areas of the Museum's collection, led by volunteer guides. No booking is required. You can read more about it here.
I took advantage of this and really enjoyed seeing a couple of sections with a super nice and knowledgeable guide. I highly recommend you take advantage of this.

In addition to all that you can also take part in Hands on sessions, where you can take a close look and even touch some of the ancient artefacts. This was a first time for me to actually hold a real stone arrowhead in my hand.
Things presented were not just some copies but real stuff! How cool is that? I guess you have to be a bit of a history buff to really appreciate this, but along with great explanation from the staff this was a really great experience.

So do yourself a favour and reserve at least an afternoon within your London trip for a visit to this gem of a museum.

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