Day 6: Green Park, Hyde Park, and the Buckingham Palace

This was a sunny day, a treasure in London to go and enjoy the parks. I wanted to visit the famous Hyde park and its gardens. I took the metro and came out of the Hyde Park corner station. As I came out, I saw statues and gates and tourists taking pictures. There were statues of war heroes, recognition of different nationalities and cultures. I even saw Palestine and Persia carved on the stone of a statue, but sadly I did not learn their significance and why they were mentioned. I joined the many tourists in taking pictures.

I then decided to move towards the Hyde park, only to realize I had gone in the opposite direction and had ended up in the second largest park, the Green park. It was just beautiful. Tall trees that were about to change colors, pigeons everywhere not scared of the people, green grass, perfect weather, the peace and quiet, all made it like walking in paintings of a dreamland. After a short walk, there was a small fountain-like area in appreciation of Canada and Canadian soldiers who fought for Britain. After a while, I gave up taking pictures of all the memorial statues.

I reached a large area with many more people, a tall statue with a golden part on top, and then I saw it across the street. The large Buckingham palace. What a nice surprise! I did not know it was just around the corner. I tried to remember what I had in mind of this palace, mainly through ceremonies for Princess Diana and then the Wedding of Prince Charles. Well, it did not look that glorious now. You could actually feel the palace had aged and the walls were not that clean and shining, like one would expect a palace to be. I do not know, maybe one comes with high expectations, or after seeing so many nice buildings I got spoiled, but when I saw the palace I was thinking to myself "this is it"?

Next, I really wanted to get to my original destination: Hyde park. Green park was triangular shape and as I was trying to go out of it from one end, I realized I had traversed the wrong side of it. I ended up walking a lot just to get out of the Green park. From the maps, I was under the impression that Hyde park is just across the street from Green park, but that was quiet misleading. It took me a while to discover Hyde park, but once I entered it, it was like entering heaven. There were small colorful gardens on each corner, usually with a small water pond in the middle. There was a nice large lake in the middle of the park. I sat there and treated myself to a cappuccino and cake. I noticed there were many Arabs around me. Some Arab women were covering their hair and were simple. Some, on the other hand, had so much make up and perfume on, it was not even nice. It was as if they were painted with brushes and getting ready to play on a theater for people to see the features of their face from hundreds of meters away. One of them looked at me from head to toe and back, and I was wondering what is she searching for? Maybe she was hoping to find something more interesting, not so plain and simple. On the other corner, two moms with their babies in strollers were having a chat over coffee and dessert. I thought they have a nice life. What is better than spending a day with your baby in such a nice place, having conversation with a friend over sweet pastries? What the hell am I doing everyday driving frantically back and forth to places, meeting deadlines, stressing over issues created by other people's mistakes in life just to get enough money to pay for plumbers and repairing my place and getting a vacation, which until the last day I did not even know I could take or not? Maybe I have it all wrong! But how did I know they were not traveling like myself? Who says their life is like this every day? I decided to think it was not the case for them everyday, just to make myself feel better and not ruin my vacation.

Different sections of the park had different signs. One was called the Peter Pan walk! The other was Princess Diana's! I decided to go visit the latter in her memory. It took a long while getting to princess Diana's fountain. It was designed using high tech computer modeling, and the fountain was supposed to be like her life: from the highest point it was pouring down in different directions, and the circle of water was accessible via small stone bridges in three different parts, an indicator of her openness to people of all walks and cultures.

And for day 6, that is all folks!