Friday, April 18, 2008

London - The London Eye

Interesting things about the London Eye

A TEAM EFFORT —It took seven years and the skills of hundreds of people from 5 countries to make the London Eye

A VIEW FIT FOR A QUEEN - You can see around 40KM(25 miles) from the top and as far as the Windsor Castle on a clear day

DING! DING! - The London Eye can carry 800 passengers per revolution - equivalent to 11 London red double-decker buses

FLYING HIGH - The London Eye welcomes an average of 3.5 million customers every year. You would need 6,680 fully booked British Airways Boeing 747-400 jumbo jets to move that number of flyer's.

HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION—Each of the 32 capsules weighs 10 tons. To put that figure into perspective, it's the same weight as 1,052,631 pound coins!

SLOWLY BUT SURELY—Each rotation takes about 30 minutes, meaning a capsule travels at a stately 26cm per second, or 0.9km (0.6 miles) per hour - twice as fast as a tortoise sprinting; allowing passengers to step on and off without the wheel having to stop

THE ONLY WAY IS UP—The circumference of the wheel is 424m (1.392ft) - meaning that if it were unraveled, it would be 1.75 times longer than the UK's tallest building - One Canada Square in Canary Wharf

TONS OF FUN—The total weight of the wheel and capsules is 2,100 tons - or as much as 1,272 London black cabs!

UP, UP AND AWAY—The height of the London Eye is 135m (equivalent to 64 red telephone boxes piled on top of each other) making it the fourth tallest structure in London after the BT Tower, Tower 42 and One Canada Square in Canary Wharf

BLAST OFF—The spindle holds the wheel structure and the hub rotates it around the spindle. At 23 meters tall, the spindle is around the size of a church spire and, together with the hub, weighs in at 330 tons: over 20 times heavier than Big Ben

We also got some amazing photos of the city while we were on the top of the London Eye. It's well worth the extra Pounds even with the horrible conversion rate for the ride and the experience.

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