Well, you would have thought that I’d have learnt my lesson from yesterday and I would have turned up nice and early to line up for what was probably the most popular building of the weekend: the Gherkin. Though I had observed the queues yesterday when I was in the Lloyd’s building I was still unprepared for how long it would already be at 10:28. Note that the building opened at 10am.

30 St Mary Axe or the “Gherkin”

To my great disappointment I walked and walked and walked to find the end of the line only to be told (along with 30 other people) that I had reached a point in the line where we were unlikely to reach the front. This with over 6 and a half hours of the opening hours left. It was worse than being at Disneyland! To put it in perspective – if you had walked the length of the queue at a normal pace it would have taken approximately 10 minutes and 1,145 steps.

Bank of England

Conveniently the Bank of England was nearby and I joined that line at nearly 11am (another one of those queues that took forever to move due to the fact that guided tours were being given). Apparently, this was the first time since 9/11 that the interiors had been open to the mass public. I found myself constantly weighing up the pros and cons of leaving the queue – on the one hand I was hopeful that all my hours of standing would be rewarded by a sudden surge in the queue that would deliver me to the door and on the other hand I was thinking of cutting my losses – the usual thing that goes through one’
s mind while in line. With a sigh I decided to stick it out and I’m glad I did. Queuing of course is a well-known trait of the British and I saw this as a good a time as any to join them. I had good company (I met a lovely quartet – one couple whose name I can recall only because of their name association with the Brady Bunch – Mike and Carol – who kindly purchased a souvenir guide book for me. The other couple kept us sustained with their barley sugar sweets but unfortunately I cannot recall their names!) and there was plenty of entertainment surrounding us including a gorilla marathon and a security threat in the form of an ominously abandoned van. Thankfully nothing blew up today though one of the gorilla runners did get hit by a bus. Ouch! Time in line: 3 hours. Steps: 241. *Gulp*

The tour itself took a good half and hour (approximately 800 steps) and was quite informative. The building is full of history and would take too much time to describe here but the features I found more interesting included the beautifully (massive) mosaic floor laid by Boris Anrep and the Garden Court: preserved by an Act of Parliament the garden, formally the graveyard of St Christopher-le-Stocks, sits in the centre of the Bank and four money (mulberry) trees are planted by the pathway as reminders of the origins of paper money (the earliest form of government paper currency was printed on mulberry bark). I ended my tour by lifting the gold bar that sits in the Bank of England museum – its probably the closest I’ll ever get to that much gold!