Emirate's London cable car experience

My wife's cousin was in London and since I was doing night shifts at work and had time on Monday morning, I offered to show a bit of London. It was October 2012. It was quite misty outside and hence though I and my wife's cousin were up quite early, we left home at noon. After having a nice Indian lunch at Sarwana Bhavan in Ilford we headed to see the Olympic stadium and the Westfield's shopping mall in Stratford. After that we headed to take a ride in London's first ever cable car system. It is called Emirate's cable cars.
From Stratford we were supposed to take a DLR to Beckton and get off at Royal Victoria station. However the electronic information board was showing not DLRs to Beckton. There were 2 DLRs displayed on the board. One was after 8 minutes and the next after 18 minutes and the destination of both was Woolwich Arsenal. My wife's cousin read the map, on which it was mentioned that if the frequency of the DLRs to Beckton was very less, one had to take any DLR to Woolwich Arsenal and get off at Canning Town station. From there, one could take a DLR to Beckton from some other platform. We did the same and finally reached Royal Victoria. On the way out we read a board on which the following was written - Emirates cable cars. There was a right arrow. As we exited the station, we saw about 3 tourists reading a map displayed on the road. We went and read that map and found that it was London Excel's map. London Excel is an indoor arena where various sporting events take place. For example, various games of London 2012 Olympics, like Taekwondo, wrestling, Table Tennis etc.. Clearly we were not looking  for Excel. However, we found later that the place from where the cable cars start their ascend was very close to the station, a few steps literally ! We took a few pics with the chain of cable cars as the background, before buying tickets for the cable cars. Since we had oysters, the lady at the till charged us just £3.20 per ticket head one way. So, each of us spent £6.40 for the return. Since my oyster for a weekly travel card and did not have money in it, the lady gave me two tickets and since my wife's cousin's oyster contained money, the lady did something with the oyster and asked my wife's cousin to use the oyster.

Both of us climbed a set of stairs to reach the boarding area. There was a lift to reach the boarding area as well. I think, since it was a Monday, there was hardly anyone where for the ride. Cable cars approaching the boarding area and then moving slowly so that passengers could get into them safely and were then going to the place from where they ascended. When we boarded a cable car, there was no one there and we got the whole car for ourselves. I had experienced the feeling of travelling in a cable car before in Switzerland. It was really great. But this was the first time for my wife's cousin. She was super excited and a bit scared when the car started to take off. We clicked pics and took videos. There were some automated informative announcements made during our travel in the cable car. The car travels for 5 minutes from Royal Victoria to Greenwich near O2 arena. We got off after the car descended in Greenwich and explored the O2 arena. Jennifer Lopez was going to perform in the O2 Arena on the same day ! After having a nice meal in Nandos, we headed back to the boarding area and took a cable car back to Royal Victoria.

It was a very pleasant experience and I definitely recommend every visitor of London to take the cable car ride at least once.

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