The trip up the Shard, a more complete story

The Shard 'experience' opened in the golden ticket hall, from where we were ushered through a security barrier to the bright orange lift. This takes you up to floor 68 and the inside viewing platform. There were quite a number of people visiting at the same time as us but the space was large, enough to take us all. The windows were all spotlessly clean but the day was murky and the visibility fairly poor. You can have a guided tour using headphones but we didn't choose those, preferring to use the signboards dotted around to tell us what we were looking at. Unfortunately these all pointed out distant objects whereas the things at our feet looked far more interesting.
We almost missed the set of steps that took us up a further floor to a more exposed platform, which was pretty interesting architecturally as we could see the construction of the cone that sits on top of the Shard. There is a bar here if anyone needs a stiff drink to fortify themselves. We watched a poor lady struggle up the steps to this top layer, where she did not dare go out in to the open but hugged the wall all the way down looking decidedly ill. Not a good excursion for the vertiginously challenged.
Here are the colour pictures of the trip including the one of the rather bizarre gift shop.
























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