Day 19: The Circle and The Square

The London Eye

Having turned in a 30 page rough draft on our project proposal, our group was feeling a little euphoric. Although we still had a lot of work to finish in the next coming weeks, we deserved an afternoon off, so we took one. I decided as it was exactly the halfway mark of my trip and I had not yet seen the Thames it was time. 

I made a quick stop by Pain du Jour (my favorite lunch spot) grabbed a sandwich and juice  and headed for Waterloo Station. Lunch on the Thames was the plan.

Waterloo Station was one of the largest stations I had seen so far and it was as puzzling to get into as it was to get out of. It was the most crowded I had seen London since I had been here, but the crowds were about to get larger. Given it was a random Wednesday afternoon, I thought I would be the only one out of work early, but no luck. 

The Circle

There were tourists everywhere. Not to be deterred, I made my way through the crowd. I was still having lunch on the Thames.The London Eye, the 443-ft ferris wheel on the bank of the River Thames is unexpectedly massive when you stand at the base of it. Moving at 0.5 mph, from a distance it doesn’t look like it’s moving at all.

The Sqaure

I learned that there are 32 passenger capsules around the wheel representing the 32 boroughs in London. The overwhelming “bicycle wheel” eclipses all other landmarks in the surrounding area except for one, Big Ben.

The Thames

The unusual convergence of the large, white, modern wheel of floating pods across the River from the enduringly stoic, brown citadel of Big Ben, was almost too obvious a statement on the collision of the old and the new, of the intersection of the past with the present. But somehow it worked. 

Parliament Square

I couldn’t help but feel though, that the combination of the crowds, the kids, the ferris wheel, the street vendors and the camera flashes gave the whole venerable Banks of the Thames, the quality of an amusement park. The line to get into the Eye was predictably long, so I skipped the ride for another day and headed across the bridge. On the other side of the bridge, Big Ben, Parliament and Westminster Abbey were classically clustered around a two block area and were equally as crowded as the The London Eye.   

Big Ben and Parliament

Abraham Lincoln

Tour buses, double decker buses, fleets of tourists and hackney cabs, flooded the streets from stop light to stop light. The smell of spicy fried onions from street vendors selling hot dogs, mixed with the sweet, caramel scent of roasted-sugared nuts being sold by their neighbors. The Union Jack canvased every tourist shop along the bank, branding everything from T-shirts to cell phone covers. This was mass-marketed tourism at its best.

And yet among the chaos of curio shops and the holler of street cabs, the flash of camera bulbs and the hustle of tour groups, there was a potency to Big Ben and Parliament. Standing there like noble lions in the zoo, ignoring all the visitors who come to gawk at them through barred cages, they firmly stood their ground.

Westminster Abbey

Indifferent and powerful, these buildings that exuded the history and power they were created to represent, were impervious to all around them, standing with powerful reserve, their decided inaccessibility sturdy against the turbulence that invaded them.

Endless buses

Parliament Square, the corner of the street where lived the honored values of a revered past and the London Eye, the colossal circle which housed the modernity of a coming age, both lived side by side along the Thames, shaping the history of their times.