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London, England
Friday night I'm going nowhere, all the lights are changing green to red
Welcome to London. Real life chronology is not represented well in this slideshow, first is last and last is first and the middle is somewhere else. I started and finished my trip at London Heathrow's poorly planned Terminal 4, visiting Paris inbetween via the always at least a little late Eurostar trains out of Waterloo. London presented the reason and timing for this visit, a city wide event called London Open House, but more about that later.
London is now a river town, the south bank of the Thames is (virtually) non stop fun from Westminster to the Tower Bridge and not nearly as creepy as it has felt in years past. Museums, theatres, restaurants, guys in glass boxes, new pedestrian river crossings and monster ferris wheels stare you down at almost every turn. Meanwhile back at the wheel, pod after pod is still on their way up- overlooking the river, the Charing Cross railway station and the almost brand new pedestrian Hungerford Bridge, finally connecting Trafalgar Square and Whitehall Street with all that fun in Southwark.
Cars (which hold about 20 people) ride on the outside of the wheel and are constantly moving. The ride never stops (excepted for disabled visitors) but moves so slowly that you only feel it while boarding or getting off, and even that moves too slow to allow any fear.
The view of London from the British Airways London Eye is, well, ok. It's not the ferris wheel's fault, it's the fault of the city. London is somewhere best seen at street level, from above it looks like a lot of roofs and chimneys. Things do pick up a bit in Westminster, but even those buildings look better the lower you get.
Everyone (or almost everyone) loves the London Eye, all for good reason. It moves, it's big, it's shiny, it's unlike anything else this world has to offer. A reason alone to go back to London.
The only surviving piece of the original Westminster Palace dates back to 1097, a grand hall that used to house the houses of Parliament but now is used for special events only. Such an event is the London Open House weekend, held every year in September. For two days hundreds of buildings in London not normally open are suddenly both free and open, creating a feeding frenzy for architecture fans everywhere. At the Houses of Parliament both Westminster Hall and Porticullis House were open to the public, two very different buildings from two very different times.
Meanwhile at the other end of town on the same weekend crowds gathered as a freak show took the stage. American David Blaine was in the midst of his "look at me, I'm in a box" trick that, well, seemed less like a trick and more like an ill advised promotional stunt. Still, while I may have had to wait a half hour at Westminster Hall or City Hall and an hour at Lloyd's of London for the Open House weekend event, the biggest crowds by far were here, everyone hoping that the crazy American had reserved just that moment to do something memorable, like to blink, to wave or to die.
As close as I got with only my 22-55mm lens with me, this is an almost recognizable American David Blaine doing what he does best, sitting in a big glass box. Wow.
