The Grand Tour London Olympics Orbit

The Orbit is the iconic observation tower built for the 2012 London Olympics.

It is considered to be the biggest sculpture in Britain and is 114 meters high.

It was designed by artist Anish Kapoor, and from the observation deck there are expansive views over the Olympic Park and onto London.

Constructed out of 600 prefabricated "nodes" and held together with 35,000 bolts. In a bid to attract visitors post-Olympics, you can absail down the tower, and soon what is billed as the tallest and longest tunnel slide will be opened.

Critical reception has been largely negative, but I kind of like it, simple guy that I am, I'm easily impressed by spectacle.

The Grand Tour: London Aquatics Centre

After Colchester we stopped in at the Olympic Park in London.

The distinctive Aquatics centre was designed by Zaha Hadid, who is well known here in Japan for having designed the new olympic stadium but then having the design rejected.

There are some design similarities between the two projects, and I have no idea what the general opinion is but I quite like it. I also liked her Tokyo proposal.

In general I like architecture that utilizes curves. I would have liked to go inside but we were short of time.

Vacation 2011 Day 4 The Shard

After Canary Wharf I still had a bit of time before my flight and as the weather was OK, which in England means it wasnt raining, I headed over to Tower Bridge to check out The Shard.

When completed it will be the tallest building in the EU at 310 meters. It was designed by Renzo Piano who also designed Kansai Airport.

Nearby is the More London complex of buildings designed by Norman Foster, including of course....

London City Hall, described by Ken Livingston as a testicle.

There is of course lots of more traditional brick architecture still left in the area......

... and then a few hours later, I was enjoying the sights, sounds, and smells of Marrakesh!!

Vacation 2011 Day 4 Canary Wharf

For my last day in London I headed out to Canary Wharf. For a long time I had been wanting to photograph the Tube station there. It was a Saturday so not many people about.

Built on top of what was once dockland, Canary Wharf is home to the offices of gangsters and robber barons nowadays known as banks, insurance companies, and other "financial service companies".

Paying themselves huge sums of money for the privilege of gambling with other peoples money, if their gambles dont pay off they suck the public purse dry.

In keeping with their own high opinion of themselves they build huge palaces of steel and glass.

One security guard tried to tell me I couldnt photograph "his" building, which was simply not true. I checked the law beforehand and when I explained that to him he said if he called the police they would take my camera.

Vacation 2010 Day 12: Paddington Station

After a day in Cambridge I headed into London to catch the sleeper train down to Cornwall from Paddington Station.

Built in 1854 and designed by the great Isombard Kingdom Brunel who designed much of what used to be called the Great Western Railway. At night the place looked pretty impressive, though I'm sure caked in soot like it used to be in the age of steam it would look somewhat different.

I was looking forward to the sleeper. As far as I can remember I have never been on a sleeper in Britain, though I did spend a night on a Russian sleeper from East Berlin to Sweden and had enjoyed that.

I used to catch this same sleeper train every week from Exeter down to Truro but just had a seat for that short, last leg of its journey.