{"id":146047,"date":"2018-06-25T07:49:12","date_gmt":"2018-06-25T07:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/selfie-tourists-puzzled-by-big-bens-new-look\/"},"modified":"2018-06-25T07:49:12","modified_gmt":"2018-06-25T07:49:12","slug":"selfie-tourists-puzzled-by-big-bens-new-look","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/english\/selfie-tourists-puzzled-by-big-bens-new-look\/","title":{"rendered":"Selfie tourists puzzled by Big Ben&#8217;s new look"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure>             <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/images\/ic\/720x405\/p06bzctz.jpg\"\/>Media playback is unsupported on your device<figcaption>Media captionBig Ben scaffolding has taken some tourists by surprise<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"caps\">It&#039;s one of the world&#039;s most instantly-recognisable tourist attractions.<\/p>\n<p>But the Elizabeth Tower - commonly known as Big Ben - is barely recognisable at the moment, covered in scaffolding with just one clock face visible.<\/p>\n<p>And it&#039;s leaving some of the millions of tourists who flock there for a photo every year a bit confused.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Big Ben falls silent for repairs<\/li>\n<li>How do you take a good photo of Big Ben?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Walk up the steps out of Westminster tube station and you&#039;ll usually have to push past holidaymakers staring up at the 96-metre tower, home to Britain&#039;s most famous bell.<\/p>\n<p>No surprise that according to the Visit London website, it&#039;s the capital&#039;s number-one hotspot for selfies.<\/p>\n<p>But with the summer holidays approaching, tourists are realising that some of their holiday snaps are not going to look quite as they had hoped.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It&#039;s a little disappointing, it&#039;s all covered up,&quot; says Dan Ross, from Utah.<\/p>\n<p>How would he describe it?<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Scaffold. I do construction, and I&#039;ve seen a lot of scaffold, but I thought Big Ben would look a little different than that.&quot;<\/p>\n<figure><figcaption>Image caption                                      Dan and Kate Ross&#039;s Big Ben selfie                              <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>His wife Kate was perplexed.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;We were looking for Big Ben but we couldn&#039;t find it - well there it is.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;In sixth grade I drew a picture of Big Ben - it was something I wanted to see. Maybe next time.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>A woman from New Zealand was similarly confused.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I didn&#039;t even realise it was supposed to be Big Ben,&quot; she says. &quot;I thought it was an apartment block or something.&quot;<\/p>\n<figure><figcaption>Image caption                                      This family from New York had &quot;no idea&quot; they&#039;d have scaffolding in their selfie                              <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Sadia, visiting from New York with her family, had &quot;no idea&quot; she&#039;d be confronted by what is said to be the largest example of scaffolding of its type in the world.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;People told me that when you get off at Westminster station, you look outside and there you see Big Ben,&quot; the 38-year-old says.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I looked at it and I was like &#039;hmmm, it doesn&#039;t look like Big Ben&#039;.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I was a little disappointed, but I understand.&quot;<\/p>\n<figure><figcaption>Image caption                                      Lee and Hayley Holden get their scaffolding selfie                              <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Hayley and Lee Holden are visiting from Liverpool.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I couldn&#039;t see it,&quot; Hayley says. &quot;He was going &#039;there&#039;s Big Ben, I said &#039;where&#039;, it wasn&#039;t until we walked around and saw the clock. It&#039;s a lot different from when I first remember seeing it when I was about eight.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Lee is looking on the bright side.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;You can still see the clock so that&#039;s good,&quot; he says. &quot;It&#039;s a hell of a lot of work going into it.&quot;<\/p>\n<figure><figcaption>Image caption                                      Tourists still try to find Big Ben&#039;s best angle                              <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Krista Brka from Latvia was also upbeat.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It&#039;s still good enough, as long as we can see it,&quot; said the 27-year-old.<\/p>\n<p>But not all tourists are as understanding.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I actually had one lady that cried,&quot; said tour bus driver Andy Cousins.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;She had come all the way to London just to see Big Ben and it was in this state and she was in tears.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It&#039;s a massive icon for London, and they&#039;ve only got one clock face that&#039;s open, so they are very very upset at the moment.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>What does he say to the disappointed sightseers?<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Google pictures of Big Ben and you&#039;ll get the perfect picture.&quot;<\/p>\n<figure><figcaption>Image caption                                      Naresh Bafna from India said he was happy with how the tower looked                              <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Behind the structure Mr Cousins described as &quot;the Transformer&quot;, the clock mechanism is being dismantled and repaired, masonry repaired, a leaking roof fixed and a lift installed.<\/p>\n<p>And perhaps all that scaffolding could become an attraction in its own right.<\/p>\n<p>Placed end to end, the 24,000 components would stretch from Westminster to Carlisle, and when the final piece was slotted in at a special ceremony  last month, House of Commons director general Ian Ailles described the structure as &quot;an absolute masterpiece of engineering&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I&#039;m sure some visitors are a bit disappointed not to see the clock tower itself, on the other hand of course this work simply had to be done,&quot; Tessa Blundy, of Parliament&#039;s architecture and heritage team, told the BBC.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I&#039;m afraid they have just to appreciate rather a special scaffolding tower instead at the moment.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake, a member of the House of Commons Commission which is responsible for maintenance matters, says the building also needs to be updated to meet fire and safety regulations.<\/p>\n<p>What would he say to the disgruntled tourists?<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I would say to them that if we didn&#039;t have the scaffolding up, there&#039;s a real risk that in the not too distant future, something dramatic might happen to the Elizabeth Tower. putting the tower out of operation perhaps for a much longer period.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>And they&#039;d better get used to it - because once the tower is repaired, it will be time to restore the rest of the Parliamentary estate - a multibillion pound project Mr Brake said would be on a similar scale to the 2012 London Olympics.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;So I&#039;m afraid that probably for quite a time to come, people visiting will have the odd piece of scaffolding in their selfie,&quot; he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Media playback is unsupported on your deviceMedia captionBig Ben scaffolding has taken some tourists by surprise It&#039;s one of the world&#039;s most instantly-recognisable tourist attractions. But the Elizabeth Tower -<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":146048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freeonlinetranslators.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}