In case anyone cares to see how I saw London, here are the photos.

Alice they're great!
A few moments of 'nostalgia' seeing them I can assure you.... Just for a moment that old monster 'home sickness' tugged at my heart. But it looks as if you enjoyed yourseld in and around the 'East End' and in Dockland'.
Thank you for sharing.
Carole B.

Brava!
You've made me think. I don't know how many times I have been there and I have bever taken a single photo. I wonder...
Did you have a good time?

Very nice Silvia! I've never been to London, or the UK at all for that matter, but that just about convinced me to hop on a plane right now!

BTW, things seemed pretty green for December (and not just because of the evergreens!). Like I said I've never been to London, what's the temperature like in southern England this time of year? It seems from the photos that it's much warmer than I had imagined. I would have expected things to look a bit... well, drearier.

Here in the US we always hear about the rainy, even snowy, cold English winters, but the city looked positively vibrant in your photos. I'd even dare to call the grass under Santa "lush."

Maybe it's just the skill of the photographer

We could use a touch of green here in Wisconsin ourselves, it's been just about the darkest, coldest, snowiest December in the last five years I remember years in the '90s when we were lucky to see snow on or before Christmas. Not this year .

England is graced by the warm Gulf Stream, so it never really gets freezing. Cold weather is to be expected furthern north, in Scotland, which is shielded by Ireland from the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, but in London it hardly freezes and snows. Lots of rain, though: drizzles in all seasons. The bad part is that in winter it really gets dark early. Here in Milano we still enjoy daylight (as gray as it is) until 5 pm, in London light came up a couple of hours (well an hour and a half) later than here and by 3;30 it was already getting dark again. It made me think of our Annika, who is currently enjoying even less daylight time per day. And London is a blast in every weather, believe me.

Judith: Does this answer your question?

Never really gets freezing? Who told you that Alice?

Maybe in London, that's so large and so full of smog, fog and exhaust fumes, it's so warm 'nothing' could freeze there I don't think.

But I had a house for five years on the Downs just north of Dover and south of Canterbury and was 'snowed in' in my Kentish village for several days on four different occasions. Such that a 'rescue' helicopter would drop supplies to the village shop to distribute and fodder for the livestock stuck out on the Downs. It was also the norm in that 'little corner of England' to lose our electricity for up to four days. Why you might ask?
Well that corner of East Kent 'sticks out like a sore thumb' right at the point where northerly winds come whistling down the North Sea from the Arctic and North Atlantic...they get to that corner of Southern England and meet the 'westerlies' that drive up the English Channel. Result? With certain temperatures and tides? Chaos - that's what! I've even known there to be ice on the car in September....
Sorry Alice, but 'Never Freezing'????

Hahaha! Some Communist you are!
I beat you. I brought back enoooormous numbers of things. About 20 reggiseno for a start. All my peculiar size. I found a pair of $85 underpants for $3.50! (I left the $2700 skirt for only $750.00) My kid is shopper extraordinaire.

Whoever said that communists should always be dressed in rags?! And, after all, all I bought was stuff that I needed and was better, nicer and cheaper in London than in Milano, plus some gifts (a cardigan for my mom, a scarf for my granny, etc.) and some food stuff that in Italy costs more or is not available (uhm... Yes, three òlarge boxes of those corporate chocolate mints that one should not buy but they are sooo goood...)

Don't believe all you hear about Scotland either. Sure the highlands will often have snow on them, like the highlands here, but the coastal areas aren't as bad as made out. Edinburgh has less rainfall per annum than Rome, and most years less than London. We're not that shielded from the gulf stream either, evidenced by the palm trees that grow up and down the west coast (washed in - not high enough average temp to fruit there), and the botanic gardens in Inverewe. Look up the Poolewe website. Or how about Britian's only commercial (albeit small scale) banana production in Achiltilbuie (long light hours in summer). Don't even hardly get frost there, never mind snow, but from the media you'd think we spent 9 months of year blanketed in it.