Up high on the London Eye

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We have a bunch of books that we need to get rid of before we next fly, so we headed down to the Tower Bridge area today in hopes that we might be able to sell some books at the secondhand book vendors there. Unfortunately, the vendors were not interested in buying, though we had a great time browsing.

After walking along further along the shore of the Thames, past some quite bizarre human robot characters performing for the tourists, we reached the huge ferris wheel called “The London Eye”. Going up the London Eye is quite expensive, so at first we thought just Joshua, who really wanted to do it, would go. After we entered the line up, Benjamin decided he wanted to go so the plan was for the two of them to go. When we reached the front of the line though, we found that they would not let kids go alone and so I had to go to while Evy waited on the ground.

The capsules on the London Eye are more like Gondola cars then a ferris wheel seat. The entire structure rotates very slowly such that people at the bottom can easily get on an off. Once on, you slowly rise up, with the car changing angle on a gear so that when you reach the top the car is being held on a rail from below affording an unobstructed view of the city.

From the top, we could easily put our tour of the city into perspective from Buckingham Palace to the Dockyards in the distance. It was a great way to see the city and I felt bad that Evy, who we could see in her blue rain coat well below us, was not on too.

After the London Eye, we walked up the shoreline to the re-creation of the Globe Theater, where Shakespeare's plays had been performed. There was a performance going on, but we picked up information about taking a backstage tour.

We still had a big stack of books to get rid of, so we went next to the Charring Cross area in hopes of finding a secondhand bookstore that would take them. We tried several and got the advice from one owner that “Your best bet is to just leave them on a park bench”. I guess there isn't any shortage of used English language books here.

After Charring Cross, we took the tube back to our flat and spent the afternoon doing school work.

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