Day Five – London’s Covent Garden Where Some People Go To Connect

Elizabeth Harper - Mac Store Covent Garden -London 2010

After arriving early yesterday in London, Margaret and I spent a short time figuring out a few transportation details and made our way to Covent Garden to see the impressive new 3-story Apple/Mac store and to check our email.

Most people would probably head for a more famous and historical destination like the Tower of London, but with a week of exploration before us we thought a quick email check and Facebook update (mine) was the thing to do first. We had an impromptu photo shoot outside the store later after noting a few things inside that we both coveted.

She took this creative snap of me on her new ( the very latest ) iPhone which is way cooler than the antique one (the first one released) that I still use. She has a cool app that can make images look a variety of ways and I chose one that made my photograph look old and a bit dated which seemed appropriate for a place where people have gathered for hundreds of years. Of course, I mean Covent Garden silly … not the Mac store.

So there I am with my Macbook in hand, coming to you almost live from London.

A quick note before we begin our adventures for today, I am able to check in from time to time so please leave a message or comment if you’d like especially with any last minute things we should not miss on our trip. I printed out all of your suggestions from this previous post and have it with me now.

Thanks again to each of you who took time to share some of your own London experiences and I want to add that do I intend to respond (after London) to the very kind comments you have been leaving me over the last few days especially those from this tender post. I’ll be back later tomorrow with Day Four in the countdown towards my big birthday and likely some stories about today.

Primroses & Powershots

I thought I’d show you a little of what goes on behind the scenes here at Gifts Of The Journey and I need to say now…it isn’t always pretty. I’m almost never without a camera of some kind. It could be my iPhone or my Nikon D200, but more often than not it’s my Canon Powershot G9. Last week, I was running through the churchyard on my way to what I refer to as the buttercup field, when I was overwhelmed by a carpet of flowers that seemed to have popped out almost overnight. There were primroses everywhere I looked blanketing the ground like a patchwork quilt. I had my iPhone with me, but I wanted to get a higher quality picture so I went on with my run, but cut it a bit short to get back to the house to pick up my Canon. It was a perfect weather day, but given how it can be sunny one minute and dark and rainy the next, I didn’t want to take any chances and I barely paused as I told John what I was up to while running in and out for the camera. He said he would walk down and join me in a few minutes and showed up a little later with his own camera.  Here’s a bit of what he captured of me that day along with the bottom three which are my images. 

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I didn’t realize until later that I had been so excited about getting the photographs that I wanted that I’d forgotten to take out my earphones even though I wasn’t listening to music. See below…

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Remember what I said about it’s not always pretty….well here goes..

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Would you like to see what I was trying to get a decent shot of back in the shadows?

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I think it’s one of the oldest gravestones in the churchyard, but I don’t have info on it yet.  

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These are two more of my photos from that morning…

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This churchyard is one of my favorites in Cornwall and much to my surprise, there  are a few Harpers buried there. No relation I’m sure, but interesting to see my name among the gravestones.