Every Girl's Dream

I sincerely believe that a London Eye and Thames river cruise

would complete the life of any girl.

I’m a dude by the way. But I recently visited both with my girlfriend and this was easily a wonderful experience for both of us, especially her.

The London Eye

is not something out of “1984,” but a giant Ferris Wheel. Giant doesn’t really do it justice. You can see everything. And instead of sitting in a rickety rusted bucket, like most Ferris wheels I’ve been on  (those of the state fair variety) you walk around in a giant air conditioned “pod” that comfortably holds 25 people.  The great thing about the Eye and Thames River Cruise combo is that you get a preliminary tour of the main London sights

you can see from the eye while cruising down the old Thames.

Then you get to see the same sights from 135 meters up, which is I believe the same height you play Simcity at.

The River Cruise is about 40 minutes long and it runs rain or shine.

Luckily, we got the shine. The Boat is noo little tour boaty skiff thing, it’s a serious barge. You can wander around the deck while listening to the tour guide over the PA.

The tour guide packed a lot of information into the tour while avoiding sounding like a lecturer. It was a little chilly, but we still were comfortable watching Big Ben, Parliament, the London Tower, and the Tower Bridge float by. Looking around I could see the boat was full of tourists, as could be expected.

Not alot of English spoken, if you want to practice your Bangla or Hindi this might be the place. The bridge sort of reminded me of the time I rode along a river in Bangladesh

.

After the cruise we got off the boat and walked straight aboard the pod. No waiting in line, the cruise gets priority boarding.

We were VIP. You hop in the pod eye and it starts moving. And you keep going up, and up, and up. And then you think “how much higher could we possibly go?” and yet you keep ascending until you start to worry that you didn’t bring your own oxygen.

The Eye was the biggest Ferris Wheel in the world when it opened in 2000, and I can’t imagine what the point would be in building one any bigger.

The views were spectacular. Although you share a pod with many other people it doesn’t feel crowded at all. There are just enough people around that you can keep to yourselves, but also plenty to ask to take a photo. The whole thing takes about 30 minutes, which goes by surprisingly quick.

The river cruise and the eye are each in and of themselves a great afternoon. Combine them and you have just about as good a day date in London as you can imagine. Quick note: book online for a 10% discount.