another day, another fantastic viewing of this city

So, excitement of all excitements, my friend Helen from Bermuda whom I met while I was at Guelph has moved to England too! She's in London for the next couple of weeks and then is off to Redding, but for the meantime I have a familiar face!! This makes me very happy. So for the last two evenings, we've been making use of the short period of time we have to do tourist-ey things before they become silly as we'll eventually just be locals.

Tonight, we went on the London Eye! That giant ferris wheel that's on many of those postcard shots of London. They called it an "observation wheel" but really, it's a gigantic ferris wheel. I mean, come on. It's a ferris wheel.

Anyways, the view from the eye is AMAZING. We did the ride at night, and it was totally worth it. The lights, the buildings all lit up from HIGH above. So great! So pretty. Magestic?

Here are some photos of that....

we are ready for the ride on the eye!

first we needed to buy tickets. and who was waiting to greet us? Pavarotti!

anyways....

first here, we have the grid work that holds the whole thing together. and next...onto the views!!!

i wish i knew what each building was. but really i know the clock tower and houses of parliament.

to the other side, there were more lights along the river. mmmm.

almost to the top!!!

a little fuzzy....but still, everywhere you looked out of the pod we were in there were city lights. it was amazing! gives you an idea of how HUGE this city is

see? ENORMOUS! it's just light after light as far as you can see.

behold....the TOP. and this is the pod that we followed around in a very identical pod.

these are two very excited tourists....who can only reasonably be tourists for a short period of time

so begins our descent

i zoomed in on this. it's a stadium that was very much far away from where we were (you can kind of see it in the picture before this one...about 3/4 of the way up on the left side of that picture). like i said, you can see everything from up here!

i am a pod person! with the houses of parliament behind me all lit up gold.

That was so worth the money, I don't care what you've heard. It's worth it! The views are amazing. Just amazing. And it's dorky fun all around.

The reason we didn't go yesterday was partly due to Helen fighting off jet lag and partly because yesterday, it POURED RAIN. The photo below is of one very drowned-rat-looking me.

oh and a ridiculous sundae that we devoured quite willingly. We were perfectly fine with taking our time with dinner yesterday. It was time spent out of the downpour. It actually rained hard enough that one of the tube stations shut down due to flooding. I thought it rained all the time over here...? Wouldn't that mean that the Brits would be ready for such a thing? 

Silly British.

Can you see the rain now? After dinner yesterday we toured by Buckingham Palace, because it was just right there at the Green Park station. So, for scale, here is me in front of it. I'm a tiny woman and those are some big gates. Oh, and I'm completely soaked. See that umbrella I'm holding? It did diddley squat. However, it redeemed itself on my walk home. I noticed later on that a bird had relieved itself on my umbrella, which meant that it missed me. So, umbrella, you only served one true purpose....shielding me from bird excrement. Rather than rain. In the rain, you kept inverting yourself. Therefore, you are a failure, umbrella. A. Failure.

We did a two-for-one deal/combo thing with the ride on the eye. We got tickets to Madame Tussaud's which should prove amusing and hilarious and awesome. 

Other than that I haven't much to update. I should be getting work any day now, which thrills me to no end. 

Having a friend in this city even for a short while made the homesick feeling disappear really quickly. I'd say pretty much instantly. 

Oh London, every day you change.

-sarah