St Pauls Cathedral and busy London

I had a busy day in London today. Living in Wales , my daughter E craves the big city. As a 16th birthday treat we took her and two friends to London so they could shop til they dropped and Mr Julesey and I planned a day in London. Due to woeful local public transport ( Grrr Dr Beeching) we drove to Reading station and went in from there.
After waving the girls off on the Northern Line to Camden Market Mr J was in charge . He took me to the Man Ray exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Wow. What a brilliant exhibition. Totally made me rethink my vision of the 1920s . Photos of so many amazing people and a real taste of the exciting times they were.
Impressed so far. He then said we were walking to a restaurant which was to be a surprise. We headed off through St James's( I think) Park towards Buckingham Palace. To my amazement there were a group of three Pelicans posing. There was a lot of crowd pleasure at this and snapping shutters. Remembering a blip I had seen I took a passable shot of one near the water with nice oily reflections . It was almost todays blip.
Lunch turned out to be 'Afternoon Tea Chinese Style' at the Grand Imperial ( part of The Grosvenor) Afternoon Tea consisted of various tasty small savoury Chinese things assembled on a traditional afternoon tea cake stand with sweet things on the bottom layer. With a glass of champagne and unlimited Jasmine Tea. Mr J had seen it in a newspaper article as one of the best 10 Afternoon Tea experiences in London. He realised that this completely lets him off the hook for impending Valentines day as it was such a lovely surprise.

The next part of the day did not go to plan. Thanks to both Apple Maps and Google Maps we then spent 2 hours walking to The Saatchi Gallery. By the time we got there at 4 it had closed early for a private function.

We consoled ourselves with a fab slice of Rhubarb tart and coffee in a small cafe and as it was now getting darker and colder we got the bus back towards Oxford Circus.

Not being used to the availability of busses we made a small error and got off the bus in the St Pauls area. Mr J saw a pub with 'Live Rugby' on a sign outside and I saw St Pauls lit up in the dark with wet roads and traffic. We agreed to differ and both spent a very happy time for the next half an hour.

Unfortunately I only had my DSLR with me and no tripod. I tried hand held but clearly blurry ( even on my ancient Canon D350 1" screen) I wanted to get the movement of the traffic and the calm , almost imperious looking St Pauls in the background. As I also have no remote control I decided to try using the self timer to reduce shake. This makes it really exciting as you have no idea what traffic will be passing as the shutter opens. I also noticed a litter bin with a point on top and rested the hole where a tripod should screw on top of this for more stability. I have been reading tips from more experienced blippers and getting a bit more confident with aperture and shutter speeds.
The end result was OK. I could have stayed longer but had teenagers to meet so took about 10 shots in the end. Some have a great night shot of St Pauls but empty streets, some had traffic trails but not great composition. This one was the best I thought overall although I would have liked more of St Pauls in it.

So back to the pub and a very happy Mr J as Wales had just beat the French at Rugby. I was on tenterhooks all the way home to see the images on a bigger screen.

The Pelican shot was probably better overall, but I like this one as it makes me feel I have learnt something over the past month of blipping.