Big Ben is an elegant structure (although slightly out-of-whack-looking here from a 3-photo collage). I haven’t been to London in 25 years, and first impressions are that— at least in central London and Westminster—it’s clean and well tended (and very expensive!). I remember it being much grittier 20-30 years back. It seems as if all the wonderful old buildings have been sandblasted or water-blasted. Maybe it’s just early fall, but the air is clean. We’ve got a fourth-story walk-up room in a modest hotel on a quiet block, two blocks from the British Museum. We look out the window into an inner courtyard, where there’s a beautiful tree with almost iridescent yellow leaves. I’m on the road for the next five weeks, and will post photos and observations whenever I can.
About Lloyd Kahn
Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the
Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include
Shelter,
Shelter II (1978),
Home Work (2004),
Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008),
Tiny Homes (2012), and
Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:
Big Ben is an elegant structure (although slightly out-of-whack-looking here from a 3-photo collage). I haven’t been to London in 25 years, and first impressions are that— at least in central London and Westminster—it’s clean and well tended (and very expensive!). I remember it being much grittier 20-30 years back. It seems as if all the wonderful old buildings have been sandblasted or water-blasted. Maybe it’s just early fall, but the air is clean. We’ve got a fourth-story walk-up room in a modest hotel on a quiet block, two blocks from the British Museum. We look out the window into an inner courtyard, where there’s a beautiful tree with almost iridescent yellow leaves. I’m on the road for the next five weeks, and will post photos and observations whenever I can.
Looking forward to following along. If you come through Copenhagen, I can pass on some of the cooler places to see, design, graffiti, and nature-wise.
Lloyd –
I am looking for a reasonable hotel in London for the end of this month. Would you reccomend the one you are in? If so what is the name and where did you book it from the US?
have a great trip!
– Phil
Phil,
It's pretty simple, big breakfast, run by Quakers. The Penn Club on Bedford Place.