London, Part 3

“Sir, you can’t take pictures in here,” a rather rude proctor barked at me. I looked down at the powered-off camera in my hand at my side and began to object, but the woman had already scurried off. I imagine that the camera restrictions were in place primarily to protect the Royal Observatory’s postcard revenue. Harrumph. That really put me off, and I bypassed their gift shop without a glance after I completed my browsing.

From Greenwich, I made my way to Canary Wharf, a business district near the Thames. I was set on finding a sculpture made from dozens of functioning traffic lights that I had seen on Top Gear, a BBC motoring show. With no idea about the sculpture’s name or location, save for that it was in a traffic circle, I set off on my quest.

That part of London was definitely well-to-do, and it was definitely not overrun by tourists. In fact, I might have been the only tourist in the area.

During my search, I encountered an outdoor, uncovered, refrigerated skating rink, where I learned that Londoners seem to have no experience on ice skates. A block away from that, I started seeing a bunch of Bimmers and then, suddenly, a BMW dealership in the base of an office building. I checked out the 1-series, which we won’t be getting in America for a while (we’re not missing out on much). Upon departing the Bavarian auto dealer, I traversed down into an underground shopping mall. The mall was completely hidden from the surface. Had I not bumbled into it, I doubt I would have noticed it.

About the time that I found the shopping mall, I decided that I must have been wandering in the wrong direction. I made my way back above ground and set off to the west.

After having a Lotus, several Porsches, and a Bentley zoom past me, I finally found the sculpture. Huzzah! Of course, by that time, the sun was close to setting, but I wanted to see one more sight in the warm light of evening: Tower Bridge.

Tower Bridge seems to be thought of as London Bridge by some Americans. According to legend, an American oilman bought London Bridge and had it shipped to Arizona. Supposedly, so the legend goes, he was immensely disappointed when he saw an arch bridge (London Bridge) being reassembled instead of a draw bridge (Tower Bridge). The man who bought the bridge, Robert McCulloch, strongly denies that he thought he was getting Tower Bridge, but would you really want to admit that you had the wrong historic bridge shipped to the other side of the world? I wouldn’t.

Darkness soon fell across the Thames, and I retreated to the West End. Harrod’s was still open, and I hadn’t yet visited.