{"id":11,"date":"2005-10-19T23:03:00","date_gmt":"2005-10-20T04:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/wordpress\/?p=11"},"modified":"2024-03-13T19:54:45","modified_gmt":"2024-03-13T18:54:45","slug":"london-looks-best-at-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/2005\/10\/19\/london-looks-best-at-night\/","title":{"rendered":"London looks best at night"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\n\"St\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\nSt. Paul’s, Saturday evening\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

\nDaytime, the City of London is ordinary. Ordinary streets, sober office buildings in pale grey stone or shiny glass. Add people in the streets, a few trees here and there, flowerbeds, and the brown waters of the Thames, and it’s a decent enough place to be – but it isn’t very exciting, really.\n<\/p>\n

\nAs it gets dark, the balance changes. Ordinariness is replaced by spots of stark beauty against a dim background, and the City becomes quiet and beautiful. The City is very calm in the evening. The noise and life that would fill a high street at night – bars, neon lights, KFC and McD – is conspicuously absent, and the little that’s there is concentrated to a few spots.\n<\/p>\n

\nAt night, all the flat grey buildings shift into the background, and others step forward. Church steeples are lit up by white lights. St. Paul’s, which is just a large grey cathedral during the day (as much as any cathedral can be “just a cathedral”), glows against the night sky, majestic and huge. Three of its sides have undergone a thorough cleaning over the past couple of years (the fourth side is still wrapped in scaffolding and white plastic) which has made it look even more beautiful.
\n
\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\n\"Tower\n<\/td>\n\n\"Lloyds\n<\/td>\n\n\"Gherkin\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\nTower 42\n<\/td>\n\nLloyds\n<\/td>\n\nThe Gherkin\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
These 3 images (C) Freefoto.com<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

\nThe top of Tower 42 (NatWest Tower) is bright blue and green; Lloyd’s steely sides are electric blue; the Gherkin (or the Swiss RE building) is topped with red sparks.\n<\/p>\n

\nA few years ago, when the Gherkin was finished but still unoccupied, all of it was lit at night: every other floor was electric blue, and every other one was bright green. Some nights it even had huge floodlights pointing at the sky. It was a marvellous sight.
\n
\n<\/p>\n

\nNights are soft in London. In the country, the night sky can be a wide expanse of stark black with sharp stars. But in London, there is always a slight fuzziness to the sky, even when it isn’t really cloudy, and stars are few and dim. So the shining lights of the City have no competition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

St. Paul’s, Saturday evening Daytime, the City of London is ordinary. Ordinary streets, sober office buildings in pale grey stone or shiny glass. Add people in the streets, a few trees here and there, flowerbeds, and the brown waters of the Thames, and it’s a decent enough place to be – but it isn’t very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everything_else"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18620,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/18620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}