London on $98 a Day - The London Eye

I don't like heights.  Glass elevators give me vertigo and just watching a tightrope walker makes my stomach tingle.  You'll never catch me on the Grand Canyon Skywalk peering into the abyss below. 

But friends assured me the London Eye, the famous Ferris wheel built to mark the millennium, was different.  Being in a capsule with twenty other or so people, having the ability to walk around the capsule, and ascending and descending very, very slowly were all supposed to take the vertigo right out of the experience. 

And they were right!  David and I enjoyed every minute of the thirty-minute trip, and, even better, there was no rain inside the capsule.

Practicalities -
There is an independent ticket office outside the official Eye building, but they sell only packages.  You must buy tickets for two or three attractions (Madame Tussaud was advertised over the loudspeaker as the chance to see the British royal family, Barack Obama, and Brad Pitt!  How's that for an intriguing grouping?), so if you want only a ticket for the Eye, you must go inside the Eye building.  That building also holds a restaurant and free bathrooms.  

In the rain and cold, the line was quite short.  When the weather is balmier, if it ever gets balmier, then I'm sure the line is longer.  Still, since the wheel doesn't stop--you have to step lively to get in the capsule as it's moving--I imagine the line would move fairly quickly.

View from the top, complete with raindrops.