London Blog II

So normally I don’t consider myself a Ferris wheel fanatic, but yesterday I found myself riding the largest one in the Western hemisphere. From the top of the London Eye you can see for miles over the sprawl and architectural tumult that is the London skyline, though it is quite different from what you might expect of a big city view. Rather than spire after spire of skyscrapers, London only offers a precious few structures that venture above the relative flat line of the city including Big Ben, the Shard, and the giant pickle (or the Gherkin for anyone who wants to be politically correct). And while the trip was not necessarily adrenaline-pumping, taking 30 minutes to make one revolution, I realized that it was that first time on the trip that I had really been able to take in the city as one entity. On foot, you get to see one attraction here, another historic building there, but it is rarely that you can find a vantage point in this city were you can just sit back and take it all (or at least a lot of it) in. Afterwards my compadres and I paid a visit to the ice cream man hanging out in his truck down below, and I have to say that it was some high quality stuff; it even had the chocolate stick stuck in it and everything.

            The next day would prove to be another quest for a lookout point, this time taking the form of a hike to the top of Primrose Hill just outside of Regent’s Park. While not quite as expansive as the Eye’s view, Primrose was still a really nice place to kick back, read, and enjoy the view of the park below. The best part of the afternoon, though, had to be the two little British girls running around on top of the hill shouting at one another, sounding more intelligent and refined than me on my best days. I think whenever I have kids I’ll raise them to speak with an English accent because I feel like it will help them get farther in life in nearly every way.

            For all of you book lovers out there, I spent most of this morning wandering around little out of the way bookshops that were chalk full of literary gold. Unfortunately, many of the things I found carried the corresponding price tag as well. For instance, I found early (possibly first?) editions of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer in a bookshop window, with each of them carrying a price of 650 pounds. Similarly, an early edition of The Fellowship of the Ring was sitting pretty at 450 pounds. The winner for the day, however, was a first edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Carroll Lewis which rang in at a healthy 7500 pounds. The fact that I was even able to touch this book is an accomplishment all its own in my mind. So no Alice or Wonderland for me today, but it was still pretty amazing to see nonetheless.