Eye in the Sky

Monday morning we slept in a bit, enjoying our luxurious room a bit longer. Then the inevitable packing up, checking out, storing our luggage at the hotel. Once those practical concerns were taken care of we headed out for a bit more London sightseeing. This time we headed down the south bank of the Thames, which had all kinds of restaurants, museums and art galleries. We grabbed a quick bite at a place called EAT. Beth had a Full English Breakfast on a bun, and I had a Eggs Benedict on a bun. They were heated up in a panini grill and hit the spot nicely.

Following this quick bite we kept on down the Thames. We came across a section of the quay where all the tree trunks were wrapped with bright red and white polka dot material. We were trying to figure out what was going on until I noticed a sign on the sidewalk indicating that this was an artist’s installation called “Ascension of Polkadots on the Trees” by Yayoi Kusama. Shortly after this we got to the London Eye. For those of you not familiar with this name, it is the very large Ferris Wheel built in the centre of London for the Millennium celebrations. We had fortunately purchased tickets already through the concierge at the hotel, which saved us waiting in one line at least. Within 20 minutes we were loaded in our capsule and going up, up and around.

The day was a little hazy, but we still got a great look at London. It was weird looking down on Big Ben! There were a couple of little girls in our capsule, and they were amusing to watch on our ride - one kept saying “There’s an Ice Cream stand” and the other saying, “Don’t even bother to take a picture of it, I’ll just delete it.”

After the ride (which takes about a half hour) we walked past Big Ben (where I got a recording of it striking 12 noon, something I missed the other day). Then we walked along the north bank of the Thames back to our hotel. It was a nice way to spend the morning.

Back at the hotel we gathered our luggage, took a cab to the Liverpool Street Railway Station where we caught a train to Harwich, the port where we board the ferry to Denmark. In our short time in England we have used 4 different train stations in London!

At the port in Harwich we were met by a very cherry clerk at the Ferry Station, and then simply had to wait for our boarding call. When the call came it was a long walk to get to the boat, but soon enough we had wrestled our luggage into our little berth (actually it seemed very spacious compared with the berth we had on the train to Glasgow). The boat pulled away from the pier and we were on our way… goodbye UK, hello Scandinavia.