Archive for June, 2010

Flowers are undoubtedly very pretty things when they are in full blossom and they have been used to seduce women or as an apology for years and years purely because of the fact that they look pretty and make a nice decoration (because lets face it they don’t really do much else once they have been cut!) But yet some clever fella has decided that flowers are not actually that great and could be genetically modified to look a lot more colourful!

The genetically modified flowers are called rainbow roses or happy roses and are made by placing various food dyes in the a cream roses water supply as it is grown with one colour being used at a time to create multicoloured flower arrangements. The exact process is unknown and is kept as a secret by the Dutch florist Peter van de Werken but you can now get them over here in Britain but they do not come cheap with one stem costing £24.49 and a dozen setting you back a whopping £64.87! So if you get a bouquet of these then your a very lucky person (or the person getting them for you is very rich!)

So it has been just over 10 years that the London Eye has been open to the public (it was formally opened by Tony Blair on the 31st of December 1999 but didn’t open to the public until March 200 because of technical problems) and it is now one of the biggest landmarks in London and is the most popular paid for tourist attraction in the UK with over 3.5 million people visiting it annually.

Overlooking the River Thames in Central London it was the tallest ferris wheel in the world at 135 metres when it was built and it remained the tallest until 2006 when the Star of Nanchang was built and was 160 metres. It is however still the worlds tallest cantilevered observation wheel because it is only supported by an A-frame on one side. I wonder if they had to slightly change any flights coming to London to avoid collisions…

The huge wheel contains 32 egg shaped pods that can hold up to 25 people at a time and one revolution takes 30 minutes, the wheel never really stops because it is sufficiently slow enough that people can walk on and off when the pod is at ground level. However they do stop it sometimes for elderly or disabled people so that they can get on and off without any risk.

It’s an amazing attraction and everyone should get visit it, it’s good for a day out if you live relatively close or of course you can get flights from Manchester, Scotland and Ireland that only take an hour or so and will save a long drive. For overseas visitors you can of course book flights to the UK or direct to London, there is plenty of other amazing attractions so you will love a couple weeks over here!