How did London become so elegant?

[Brave New World]

London is currently going to vastly improve the lighting of it's bridges and the Thames.

At the moment the lighting is only on some bridges and doesn't have the latest LED Technology, however this is about to change.

Illuminated River

[TheseGoTo11]

My mother and grandparents were born in England, and I've been visiting London almost annually since I was a kid in the late 70s. I used to hate how backwards, depressing and grimy it was around 1980, and it felt way way behind what I was used to in America. It felt like it was all past/no future. I remember my grandmother asking me favorite part of London, and I told her the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow, because it meant I was going home.

But it's been continuous improvement ever since. By the late 80s as a teenager, I noticed it was looking much cleaner and started to feel more dynamic. The wooden escalators and run down tube cars were being replaced, buildings around Hyde Park and South Kensington looked like they had been power washed. And you could plan trips because the country stopped going on strike every five minutes.

I was recently at the Greenwich Observatory and couldn't believe the view of the skyline across the Thames around the Docklands. I remember standing there as a kid and looking across at nothing but industrial waste. London for me is now like New York, I never run out of things to do, and look forward to every trip.

[kettlepot]

Originally Posted by the troubadour

London in a few years was a city of bankers, earning big lucre, displacing us pheasants.

You poor pheasants.

I suggest relocating to Windsor where I hear the Queen has a great fondness for the pheasants. She's very fond of pheasant indeed.