Saturday, October 3, 2009

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

This is where I live.

The front door to my dorm. The dorm is called Sorbonne. It was, formerly, a hotel. Fifty-two students live in this building. Every room has its own bathroom and each floor share a kitchen. About 13 people share the kitchen that I use. It can be either really hot or extremely cold in there. It is never at the perfect temperature.

That bay with all those small windows is my room. I never noticed how many small panes make up those windows or that there are 15 larger windows or that there are 180 small window panes until this picture. That's a lot of windows! I guess it's good that if one small pane breaks, the others don't break. What I like most about the room is the high ceiling. People who know me know that I like emphasis on verticality in a room.

Queensberry Place -- The road that my dorm is on. One end is the Natural History Museum. (You can see it in the picture on the left.) The other end is the Lycee Francise Charles de Gaulle's preschool. In the morning, there is major traffic on the sidewalk. There are tons of kids with their scooters, parents, strollers, and cars to weave through. During the day, buses, trucks, and all other type of cars drive through. It can be annoying loud.

Cromwell Road -- This is a major road in South Kensington. The Circle and District Line tubes even run under this road. On this road are the Natural History Museum (in the left picture), Victoria & Albert Museum, and a lot of hotels. A few minutes northeast is Harrod's.

On the way to the South Kensington tube station. There is so much construction going on around this area. I think they are trying to make the area pedestrian only. Every day, the path you are allowed to take changes due to construction. It can be a bit confusing.

The South Kensington Station. From this station, you can take the District and Circle Lines and Piccadilly Line. The District and Circle Lines are the original lines of the London Underground system. Because it's so old, a lot of the times it doesn't work well. Piccadilly Line, on the other hand, works well but it's really deep underground so it takes like five minutes to get to ground level. At some station like Gloucester Station you have to take an elevator down to the Piccadilly Line. I quite like the sign and ironwork as seen in the left.

Harrington Gardens -- This is where the classrooms are. The architecture along this road is one of a kind. It's from the Arts and Crafts Movement. It reminds me of Dutch architecture especially the upper part of the buildings. There's so much details on the facade which make the flats even more beautiful to look at.

I don't really want to mention this place but here it is--this is where the laundromat is. See that green sign? It costs about £10 or $16 to wash and dry one load of clothes. I'm proud to say that I haven't gone there so far. It's been five weeks and counting.

Zetland Arms -- Not too bad of a local bar.

And finally a Lamborghini dealership. This neighborhood is not complete without it.

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