The Eye of London and Westminster Abbey

The British Airways London Eye is the world's largest Ferris wheel.  Each capsule holds over a dozen people and rises 135 meters into the air where you can see across the Thames river and down onto Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and quite a bit of the rest of London.  We rode the Eye on our second day in London.  While it was very cool, it's the kind of thing that you probably only ever do once.  It's a bit too tourist-y -- especially telling is the option to buy a photograph of your ride in the Eye.

This first picture is of Agnes on the Millennium Bridge, with the Eye of London in the distance.  Once we were in one of the capsules, we took a picture looking down on Big Ben and the Parliament building.

Given our good experience with the pre-recorded audio tour at the Tower of London, we decided to take the audio tour at Westminster Abbey.  The recording is notably more dour -- no tales of escape attempts, torture and executions.  Instead, Westminster Abbey holds the final resting place of quite a number of the British royalty, such as Edward the Confessor, Mary Queen of Scots, and Queen Elizabeth I.  All around the abbey are a number of tombs containing their remains.  Atop many of the tombs are sculptures of the deceased, where the face was created by taking a mold from the person's death mask.  Pretty creepy.  Westminster Abbey also holds the coronation chair, which is where almost all of the monarchs of Britain have sat while being crowned.  The chair is full of graffiti; apparently, there was a time when anyone was allowed to sit in it.

In the back of the abbey is an area known as poet's corner where a number of poets, authors, and artists are honored.  Among those who are buried at Westminster Abbey are Geoffrey Chaucer, Lord Byron, and Charles Dickens.  Others, including John Milton, William Wordsworth, and T. S. Eliot have memorials at Westminster Abbey, but aren't actually buried there.  Shakespeare, of course, gets a place of honor.

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