Sunday June 4th

The London Eye

If you ever get to London, this is a must see! We had our flight scheduled at 11am.

The eye is about 440 feet tall. It consists of 32 capsules, each designed to hold 25 people. The capsules aren't suspended like on a ferris wheel, they are mounted so that the capsule rotates as the wheel goes around. During the flight, you are always standing upright. When you are at the top, you are above the wheel of the eye, and you have an unobstructed 360 degree view of London.

This is what a capsule looks like.

This is what it looks like, lit up at night.

Below is a panorama view from the eye. It encompasses about 200 degrees in the field of view. When I have some more time, I'll work on the stiching to make the image less blurry. This is a very wide shot, you will need to scroll to the right to see all of it.

This is us in the capsule on the Eye. Boy was this a hard shot to get!

After our flight on the London Eye, we went over the Britain and London Visitor's Center, where we picked up our London Pass. The London Pass provides free entrance to many attractions in London, as well as providing an unlimited use pass for the public transportation system, including the underground and the bus system. Tonite, we're going to eat at the Hard Rock Cafe, where we get priority seating and we get a private tour of "The Vault" where they keep their prized memorabilia.

Hamleys Toy Store

Hamleys is a 7 story toy store, located on Regent Street in London. Regent Street is one of the more well-known shopping districts in London. They have many stores here, building after building of them, including many American favorites, such as a McDonalds which seats over 200.

The ground floor, which you see above contains all of the soft toys. The 1st floor was all games. We picked up a couple of new games there, 221b Baker Street, and The Great Game of Britain. I haven't seen either of these before now. Hobbies are on the 4th floor, which contains all of the Slot Cars. The slot cars are more expensive here, about £32, which is about $64. They have the Formula 1 Scalextric set on display, probably since the British Gran Prix is being held this Sunday. They have a great slot car set for kids, 3 years and up, called My First Scalextric....

On the way back to the hotel, we rode one of the double-decker busses, where we were held up in traffic because of a demonstration that was going on in front of the National Portrait Gallery, which you probably won't hear about on US TV.