From the Tower to the Needle

Another fun, fun day of Festival-ing today. This time we started at the other end of the line, crossing the Tower Bridge, which is all-in-all a pretty cool way to span a river.

We saw and heard a 1,000 person choir that made beautiful music. Then musical beauty of another kind as we stopped to listen to some pretty fair zydeco tunes that certainly reminded us of home. The dancers taking advantage of the music were no slouches, either. It was almost surreal to watch some top-notch hoofers doing the Cotton-Eyed Joe on the south bank of the Thames!

A good bit of our time today was spent sitting and just taking in the scene. People-watching doesn't get much better, plus I haven't yet gotten tired of watching the river. We could actually see the tide rushing out as the water swirled around the pylons supporting the Millennium Bridge.

As dusk approached we watched the carnival parade from Blackfriars bridge and along the Victoria Embankment. It included some amazing concoctions, and some that were awfully cute, too, like these little water lilies.

We had to hang on for the fireworks at 10 p.m., and it was starting to get a little chilly after a beautiful sunny afternoon. So we did some creative bus-riding to stay warm while killing time. You can see a lot from the top of one of those double deckers. The fireworks display (sorry, no pictures) was as fabulous as we expected, and even the view of the river before the pyrotechnics made our chilly wait worthwhile. This picture was taken from our vantage point near Cleopatra's Needle. What a weekend!