So we have some special news for you today… And we’d love to know what you think!

Since the photographer half of us has just bought a new camera, the Canon 70D (details over on our Twitter) there’s his old 600D around the place. He’s looking to sell it, but hasn’t yet, so he very kindly offered it to me temporarily to try out a few shots. Although I’m terrified of dropping it, I’ve been having a brilliant time on our photography days out (making heavy use of the ‘automatic’ setting…). I’d love it if you’d have a look at my efforts and see what you think! Suffice to say I won’t be taking over as the primary photo-taker in this relationship, though…

NB: read this post first for an explanation of where we went.

Chandos House:

Houses of Parliament:

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As part of the wonderful Open House weekend which swept across London recently, we braved the queues and decided to go and visit a couple of the open venues. But first, a gripe… Although the Open House concept is amazing, and the execution good too – friendly staff, efficient queuing and a huge number of open places – the app is genuinely terrible [so frustrating]. Without opening times and days despite them being on the website, entire venues going AWOL, and with an impossible map, we had problems planning where we wanted to go and started the Sunday heading to Portcullis House which was in fact closed. (Annoyed, we ventured on to Westminster Hall, which looked fairly uninspiring in the Open House listing; fortunately for us, it was actually one of the highlights of the whole project.)

But first, Chandos House. Rather random, and again not portrayed favourably on the Open House publicity, we chose it for the Adam brothers’ name and the fact that it was just behind Oxford Street, which was on our way elsewhere. However, it was possibly one of the most exquisitely gorgeous gems I’ve seen in London.

A confection of sparkle and pastel colours:

It was designed by the Adam brothers as a showcase of their design talent, and is now owned by the Royal Society of Medicine. You can in fact stay here, and it’s a remarkably reasonably priced hotel for such a central location – recommended for a special and secret stay in London!

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Recently, the wonderful Open House weekend took place in London. Although our Sunday visits had a few issues (see the next post for that story!), on Saturday we headed to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to take a peek inside. The queue was terrifyingly long but surprisingly fast-moving, and we were inside and through security in about 20 minutes.

We were awed at what we saw when we entered! Surprisingly opulent and with stunning ceilings and colours, we very much enjoyed wandering around.

Designed by Gilbert Scott (along with other large parts of London!), there are various beautiful rooms which are [casually] used as meeting and conference rooms by the Foreign Office.

There are huge, grand halls, making it hard to believe it was a petition away from being demolished, being run down and largely derelict 50 years ago.

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