This page is about the districts around the famous long and busy shopping street Oxford Street in central London: Marylebone, Mayfair and Bloomsbury.Parts of these districts belong to the borough of Camden.

Marylebone

Marylebone is the name of the district just north of Oxford Street. Madame Tussaud's, Baker Street, Selfridges department store and the southern edge of Regents Park are in this area.

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Selfridge´s. A famous department store with a facade with classical columns that is almost as luxorious as Harrods.
We just went through the ground floor.

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Madame Tussauds's. This is the original of the famous wax cabinett with many wax dolls of celebrities as Tony Blair, George W Bush, Kofi Annan, Madonna, Arnold Schwarzenegger, queen Elizabeth and The Beatles. The interior is very luxorious with gold frames and huge crystal chandeliers and there is a ride in fictive London taxis through a landscape of wax dolls like Shakespeare. Even if it is rumoured to has painfullys long queues, we just had to wait for just about 20 minutes because we had already bought our tickets from the sightseeing bus, a tip from the Brazilian girl.

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William Shakespeare seen from one of the fictive taxi cars. However, everyone agreed that Madame Tussaud's was a bit of a dissapointment. It was not so large as we thought, and the wax dolls didn't look so real.

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The coolest part of the wax cabinnet, however, was the Chamber of Horrors (above), the dark place in the basement where we could see the serial killers and real actors where chasing the visitors and trying to scare them!

We also visited Baker Street, trying to find the house that the fictive detective Sherlock Holmes used to live in at 22 Baker Street. But an old man tried to explain to us that the have removed his house to Paddington and that they torn the house down to build Mark & Spencer, that later moved to another location on Oxford Street. And there was no sign on today's 22 Baker Street, probably to avoid tourists. But we found a Sherlock Holmes souvenirs shop and even a Beatles store. Bakers Street is a nice old fashioned street, that goes from Regents Park (that we visited for the first time earlier this day, see the park section) to Oxford Street.



Bloomsbury

Bloomsbury is the name of the district just north of New Oxford Street. British Museum and British Telecom Tower are located here.

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Centre Point. The only skyscraper in this area. Just 117m tall and 35 floors, but looks much taller because of its location. It is built in 1967, but it also looks much newer than it is in my opinion. It could be seen from our hostel room.

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Oxford Street. Unfortunately I don't think I have any picture that do Oxford Street justice. It is probably the most famous and busy street in the whole London. This is a street where you come to, sooner or later. One evening on Oxford Street, we where caught in a traffic jam with at least 30 buses in a line, that wasn't even moving. So the bus driver let the passengers get off the bus, so we could walk the rest. Oxford Street has more than 300 shops, among them HMV, the oldest record store in the world, Selfridges, JH Lewis, Debenham and Mark & Spencer's flagship stores.

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Oxford Circus is not only the busy intersection of Oxford Street, it is also the border of Marylebone, Mayfair, Bloomsbury and Soho.

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Euston Tower. On our way to find BT Tower, surprisingly enough we found this skyscraper from 1970 instead first, that is 124m tall and has 36 floors. It is the borough of Camden's tallest office building.

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Tottenham Court Road is the name of the road that leads to BT Tower and Euston Tower.

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Before we managed to find BT tower, we just saw the reflections of the tower in this glass buildings, but couldn't see the tower in reality!

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British Telecom Tower. At 191m, this famous telecom tower from 1964 is London's 4th tallest structure.


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There used to be a revolving restaurant on the top that was open to public until 1980, 5 years after it was bombed by IRA.

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Standing in the middle in a lowrise residential district, I tried to find the base of the floor to see how tall it is, but it turned out that was impossible, because it stands in the middle of the courtyard of British Telecom's locked headquarters. That also explains why the tower was so hard to find.

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On the way home we found the house of the rising sun.

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British Museum. Considering that the entrance is free, and that everything comes from the real world, this museum is by far more worth to visit than Madame Tussauds. The museum is very large and has departments from different parts of the world. It is London's 2nd most visited attraction. The first part of the museum, Montagu House, was completed in 1676.

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The classical architecture of the museum is also very interesting. The cool thing is that for the millennium (year 2000) they built an enormous glass roof designed by Norman Foster over the old buildings, creating a huge courtyard, called the Great Court.
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The library inside the dome, in the middle of the courtyard below the huge glass roof.

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The Greek/Roman division.


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The Egyptian division.

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The Rosetta Stone, the key to the understanding of the hieroglyphs.

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The Asian divison with Buddha statues and carpets.

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This tall totem pole stands in the middle of this stairway hall.

Mayfair

Mayfair is the name of the district just south of the west part of Oxford Street.

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Marble Arch. Originally built as the grand entrance of Buckingham Palace, it has been removed to the northeastern entrance of Hyde Park in a very trafficated
intersection. This is also the beginning of the Mayfair district.

Your pics ain't coming up mate.

Well I see them.

woww the rosetta stone :uh: wonderful pics!!

I can't see them either...

you have some problem with your pc :yes:

Odd... I can see them now...

Fruits of donation
VVC dedicates School of Health Sciences in Dr. Prem Reddy's honor

By EMILY BERG/Staff Writer

Renovated classrooms, state-of-the-art equipment and more classes for students are the fruits of a $1 million donation from Dr. Prem Reddy to Victor Valley Community College.

As a big thank-you to Reddy, the founder of Desert Valley Hospital, the college dedicated the Dr. Prem Reddy School of Health Sciences at a ceremony on Friday.

About 100 VVC students, staff and government officials attended the ceremony, which included the unveiling of a plaque to mark Reddy's gift to the college.

"We always know Dr. Prem Reddy is a friend to this college," said President/Superintendent Patricia Spencer.

The substantial contribution has allowed the health science programs, including nursing, respiratory therapy and paramedic, to expand during a time of budget cuts from the state, Spencer said.

The nursing program has added 10 students a year to its course, new computer software for students to learn human anatomy and nursing care as well as other equipment, said Pat Green, the director of nursing.

The respiratory therapy program has doubled the number of labs. The program now has a work station for every two students rather than four students sharing a station. It also has all the equipment students will use on the job to train them on, said Larry Boucher, the chairman of the respiratory therapy department.

"Now they can actually reach their competency before they enter the critical care environment," Boucher said.

The program has its first waiting list for students, Boucher said.

The paramedic program has also doubled thanks to the donation, said Scott Jones, a paramedic instructor.

The audience members rose to their feet in a standing ovation when Reddy approached the podium.

Reddy began his life in a poor village in India and was the first of his family to attend school. The fact that there is now a school named after him is a true example of the American dream, Reddy said.

"I was just simply trying to do my job," he said.

Reddy believes it is his duty and obligation to contribute to the community that has given him so much support.

"Everything I have has been given to me by this community," he said.

:banana: :banana: :banana:

Shame, I can't see the pics either, but I've still read your comments. Hopefully I'll be able to see them some other time.

Everyone in the UK knows that Madame Tussaud's is a tourist trap. As you say, the British Museum is far better and FREE, so I'd definitely recommend going there over MT, unless you're really into that sort of thing!

I can't see the pics :(

I can't see any pics either.

^^ Well the thread was started 2 years ago - so i expect all the links are long dead by now.