Best of the River Thames

Sometimes it’s easy to forget just how much there is to do in London. I lived there for a year and visit regularly, but it took a trip on the London Eye to make me realise just how much I haven’t done. This started to strike before I’d even got on it. Within a couple of hundred metres’ walk, there’s so much – the London Aquarium, the London Film Museum and the Florence Nightingale Museum are within spitting distance. And then, of course, there are the Houses of Parliament staring at you from the other side of the River Thames.

On Top of the London Eye

The London Eye

Before you get on the London Eye, you go through the ‘4D experience’. It’s a fairly cheesy video screening that sees you wear silly glasses, simulate a bird’s flight over some of London’s most recognisable icons and get spat at by various water and bubble-flinging contraptions that are hidden in the room.

Charing Cross Station from the London Eye

It’s fun, but it’s merely a taster. The Eye itself is, for me, a surprisingly fascinating experience. Despite its claims to be the tallest observation wheel in the world, this isn’t true. The Singapore Flyer has an extra 30 metres on it. But the Eye is arguably more impressive – it sticks out more prominently on the skyline, and because the surrounding buildings aren’t as high as they are in Singapore, the views are more arresting.
As you go round, you get a great perspective on London. Everything seems to be in a slightly different place to where I thought it was, while the ring of green around Hyde Park and Green Park to the west is in stark contrast to the dreary sprawl to the south.
It’s the odd things you notice that stick with you. For me it is number of cranes and flagpoles dotted around the city, the uniformity of some of the architecture between the Victoria Embankment and The Strand and the number of buses that plough towards Trafalgar Square at once.
I’m particularly struck by Charing Cross Station. From up high, I get a view that I’ve never seen before – largely because I usually approach it by train. The railway entrance really is striking – it must be one of London’s most underrated buildings.

London Eye