Have you ever been to London? I've been there once - for about 24 hours - on the way to Paris (for which we went through the Chunnel).
Hubs has been exploring London online. He was reading a bio of Michael Palin (of Monty Python fame), in which much of London was mentioned, so Hubs would read a part about a certain location and then look it up on Google Maps. While there, he would wander - virtually - around the streets and check out the various area. He seemed quite interested in what he was seeing, and with that in mind, I suggested to Santa that Hubs might enjoy a 4D London Puzzle for Xmas.
We had done the 4D New York City puzzle last year, and that was fun, so I thought we would enjoy London. We did enjoy working on it, but I have to warn you, this one is HARD and a lot more time-consuming than NYC. There are actually 2 puzzles:
We did them in backwards order. You are supposed to do the brown/beige puzzle first (lower one shown above). It is a traditional thin jigsaw, and there is a picture to follow. This is a map of what London looked like in 1666 just before The Great Fire. The writing at the right is fairly easy to piece together, and the river isn't too hard, but O M G, the brown buildings and road and wall lines..... took us FOREVER! I finally lost patience with it, and gave up for awhile. Hubs percevered!
Then you are supposed to do the upper puzzle and lay it on top of the lower one. The upper puzzle has puffy, 3D pieces and the river is open, so when you lay it on top of the beige one, the river shows through.
Next, you add buildings on the puffy, top puzzle so it ends up looking like this:
So here is the city from left to right or west to east:
The buildings are supposed to be added in the order they were built, and you are given a timeline to follow for that stage.
It was interesting to note the lack of building between the mid '30s and the early '60s. It was also interesting to note the huge boom in building in the last 15-20 years. The London Eye (Ferris Wheel) was built in 1999, so you can see from the timeline how many buildings have gone up since then.
One thing we did (thanks to SmartPhone technology) was look up some of the buildings to see what they look like in real life as we were getting to them on the chart. I would now like to entertain you with some of the fantastic architecture of modern London:
First, we have a building we refer to as The Thumb, but it is London's City Hall - opened in July 2002:
Next, we have a building nicknamed The Gherkin. This is a commerial skyscraper at 30 S. Mary Axe in the Financial District - opened in April 2004.
Towering above The Thumb is The Shard at 95 stories - opened in 2013 (They tried to call it London Bridge Tower, but "The Shard" stuck. This is a mixed use commercial building with an observation deck:
At 20 Fenchurch St - opened in 2014 is The Walkie Talkie - a 34 story commercial office building with a 3 story garden at the top:
Also opened in 2014 is the Leadenhall Building - lovingly refered to as The Cheese Grater:
At 22 Bishopsgate is another commercial skyscraper called The Pinnacle - I found mixed stories about whether it is actually completed yet or not, but it does appear in the skyline:
Speaking of the skyline, there are many great images on Google of the London Skyline, but here are some of my favorites:
All of the buildings I've shown here are in Central London - the oldest area of town. There is also a huge section of relatively new large buildings in what is called the Canary Wharf area of town which is east of the old city. (On my puzzle map, it is the section at the far right.) Researching that area is a whole different project! Here is what that skyline looks like:
Not everyone is happy about all the new skyscrapers in London (and there are many more that I haven't mentioned here), and critics sometimes joke about them. There is even a design out there for something called Endless City in the future which might look something like this:
I have been fascinated by exploring - virtually - these unique structures, and I find myself being a little disappointed that structures like this don't seem to be going up in the U.S. Without the 4D London Puzzle to put together, I am not sure I would have become aware of all these cool marvels of architecture. That factor alone makes this puzzle worth the time it took to complete!
The same company makes similar puzzles for many cities around the world. Check one out and let me know what you think of it!
Thanks for joining me on this architectural journey today!
:)Amy
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