Behold! The London Eye (with blue lights) and if you squint & look really hard, you can see Big Ben below the string of white lights, center of picture. This is as good as it gets, ladies and gentlemen...
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| New Year's Eve |
This was the first year they sold tickets to be down by the river front to better manage crowd control and avoid any scary scenarios, so we figured it would be crowded, but manageable. The gates opened at 7:30pm; we got there at 8:00 and got fairly close to the riverfront, but fairly far from the Eye and Big Ben. We didn't mind as most of the fireworks would be up in the sky anyway.
But the crowds just kept coming. They all had tickets, and they just kept coming.
Pushing and shoving to get in front or at least closer.
But there wasn't an inch in any direction to move... and we'd only been there an hour.
The only thing I could do was watch the back of the person in front of me as Bill protected me from the jostling hoards. Every 15 minutes or so I'd swivel around to look up at Bill, see how he was doing (he'd grumble), ask what time it was (another grumble), and then swivel around to look at the back of the person in front of me again.
The porta-potties were back near the entrance, so good luck getting to one and forget ever getting back to your spot. We stayed two full hours, but knew we had to stand there ANOTHER TWO HOURS to enjoy the 15-minute fireworks display.
Bill finally asked if I would be devastated if we left early, and honestly, I was pretty ready to go myself. Once we decided to go, trying to extricate ourselves from the crowd was yet another challenge. It was horrible. Once away from the teaming hoards, Bill turned to me and said the quote of the evening, "That was one of the dumbest ideas I've ever had!"
Needless to say, we walked back to our bed & breakfast amongst festive New Year's Eve revelers.
Once "home" we watched the New Years Eve fireworks like normal people, on the television.
Here it is, thanks to BBC1. It sure would be cool to see it some day with our own eyes...
Well, I only saw about three minutes of it, but it looks like the most awesome fireworks show I've ever seen! So many going off at once! It would be a sight to see, but not with those crowds! It reminds me of the 50th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, when they closed it to car traffic, and let people cross it. They estimated 800,000 people were on the bridge, flattening it.
ReplyDeleteYikes! That many people on the GG Bridge would be scary! We really had hoped that they would have sold enough tickets so that it would be crowded, but not so unbearable. It sure would have been nice to see, but the crush of people was too much. I guess we won't be going to Times Square for the ball drop, either! :-)
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