Living in Cornwall you can often get fed up with tourism as it feels like the only thing important in Cornwall. Like a spoilt only child, tourism, although a major source of income to Cornwall is also a major source of anger and annoyance. Crowded supermarkets, blocked roads, busy beaches people driving slowly to enjoy the view when your in a hurry to get to work then empty second homes for the rest of the year. I often forget how to relax and take in the local scenery during the height of the summer holidays. But on a recent week off out of the county it was my turn to be that annoying tourist, my turn to turn someones daily commute on the train into my excitement for the morning and turn a normal Friday in London into my holiday.
In true tourist style we headed to the train station and bought our daily travel cards giving us free reign to travel all over the city for the whole day and with a whole bunch of leaflets in our hands we headed into the big smoke. Both excited to be heading into London we had to take a cheeky selfie of our excitment amungst the daily commuters looking glumly out of the window of the train on their journeys into work, probably thinking the same about us as we do in Cornwall.
First stop on the itenary was the new Emirates Air Line over the river Thames. From Chelmsford train station we took the overground train to Stratford where to changed onto the docklands lite rail to the Royal Victoria train station. On arrival this was to be my first experience of seeing the millenium dome up close and in the flesh... ok so it's not even called the millenium dome any more and that was it's name now 15 years ago!!!!! Seriously where is the time going? We had a quick walk through the now named 'The O2' and were quite impressed by the sheer amount of bars, restaurants and size of the cinema on offer and would love to go to the dome again one day to experience a gig there.
Moving on from The O2 we walked over to the terminal for the Emirates Air Line which is a cable car that crosses the river Thames from the Emirates Royal Docks across the water to the Emirates Grennwich Peninsula. It was amazing to see the little cable carts going up and over the river and interesting to read that during rush hour the cable cars go at twice the speed to transport commuters over the river however during the day the 'flight' takes just 10 minutes to cross the water.
Arriving at the ticket booth there was barely any body there using the service and myself and my partner paid less than £10 for our two single tickets and as it was so quiet we had a cable car all to ourselves a priviledge that would normally cost an additional £88 for a private booth!
The views us we took off up and over the river were really impressive, the views over The O2 and the views towards the city. You could see the olympic park at stratford as well as the tower blocks of canary wharf.
Next on our agenda was to visit The Crystal a fairly new Eco building designed to explore how cities will move forwards in the future as we grow and grow and how we can do this whilst helping the environment. Read my next blog post all about the Crystal here.
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