I've been in London for 1 week. I spent my time sightseeing - Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, British Museum, Natural HistoryMuseum, and all the usual tourists attractions. Most places are absolutely packed with tourists.
Last weekend I went to Kew Gardens which are 121 hectares of gardens and botanical glasshouses. Kew is responsible for the world's largest collection of living plants. The living collections include more than 30,000 different kinds of plants, while the herbarium, which is the one of the largest in the world, has over 7 million preserved plant specimens. Kew was put on the list of World Heritage Sites by UNESCO in 2003.
As you can see, it is too large to see in a day. I thought that if I had come here with members of Satokan, I would enjoyed more... To my surprise, there were a Japanese gate and a rock garden. The gate was a four-fifths scale replica of the gateway of the Nishi Hongan-ji temple in Kyoto and surrounded by a reconstruction of a traditional Japanese garden. But I thought that these were far different from real things of Kyoto, because the gate was not decorated with gold colour and a pine tree was not screwed. In addition, I was not impressed with autumnal tints in the garden so much. I miss Japan's
autumn...
Anyway, London is a great place and I've taken lots of photographs so you can see in my blog. And I bought some souvenirs for you.
I have not tasted any English herb tea yet. I try it if possible. I want to know whether it is better than Michy-san's.
