The newest addition to London’s skyline is the Shard, at a whopping 308 metres tall, which is 72 floors. The two lifts that beam you up to the top are unbelievably fast (up to 6 metres a second) and make your ears pop! It’s twice the height of the London Eye, which is one of my favourite landmarks with a view over London. So you can imagine that the view from the Shard is stunning – it’s so high up that you can see the actual bends in the River Thames, almost as if from a bird’s eye, and you tower far above the skyscrapers of the financial district, the City. It’s the tallest building in London and also in all of Western Europe.

           It owes its name to its design – it looks like shards of glass sticking up into the air, and is perched just on top of Tower Bridge station, on the southern bank of the Thames. Tickets to see the View from the Shard costs £25 for an adult & £19 for a child, but are only worth it on a clear day, so check the weather forecast before you book. I went in the daytime but would love to visit it at sunset as well to see London light up bit by bit… We even saw a group of 4 people climbing up the side and abseiling back down again, which is something I would absolutely love to do! I can’t find anything on the internet about how to do it or how much that would cost, but if anyone knows about how to go about it (without freestyling it like the Greenpeace protesters, obviously…) then please let me know! The two images above are postcards bought at the Shard itself, and the photos below are all my own.