I've been wanting to go up the London Eye since it was built for the Millennium bonanza in 2000. I'm not very fond of heights (changing light bulbs on a stepladder makes me queasy), I hadn't exactly gone running down to London to give it a whirl, so to speak. Since we were going to be in London to see the Fast Show live, Paul booked us tickets for the London Eye as well knowing that I'd always wanted to go.
The "pods" hold around 25 people, constantly revolving to pick up and drop off each load of passengers. You are enclosed in a plastic bubble for 30 minutes, while the wheel gives you a fantastic view of London.
It's not terribly crowded inside, and people were nice enough to scoot to the side to give us a better view when they saw we had cameras.
There's a seat in middle if you get tired of standing, and if you're a happy couple, you can snog away and no one will notice, as this picture proves.
This doesn't give you a full view of the massive queue, but it does give you the gist of it. I couldn't believe that we'd make it through in 30 minutes (you get in line 1/2 hr. prior to your trip), but we did. The queue moves surprisingly fast and the 30 minutes go by very quickly - if it's not pouring buckets on you, of course.
We took pics of the pod next to us, and people starting waving and taking pictures back. I didn't capture the waving, but you can see one guy taking our pic.
My Paul on top o' London. He was playing tour guide to two ladies who weren't sure what they were looking at, and very helpfully pointed out the sights for them. Bless. :)
Views from the pod - Big Ben in this one. We were very lucky in that it was extremely foggy on the journey to London and we were expecting lots of rain. Although it was misty, we didn't get rained on and we could still get a pretty decent view.
Charing Cross station.
The Houses of Parliament and way off in the mist is Kensington Palace.
Big Ben and the sun setting.
There was some sort of trampoline/bungee jump thing happening at a nearby museum, along with a Dali exhibition. Talk about surreal.
Paul and the Eye as seen from the bridge.