Apple Store Covent Garden opening day photo tour

This weekend Apple opened the doors to its largest store yet -- right here in London's Covent Garden. CNET UK was on hand to document the grand opening, and to take a tour around the shop itself...

Luke Westaway

Luke Westaway is a senior editor at CNET and writer/ presenter of Adventures in Tech, a thrilling gadget show produced in our London office. Luke's focus is on keeping you in the loop with a mix of video, features, expert opinion and analysis.

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Luke Westaway

Aug. 9, 2010 4:05 a.m. PT

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This weekend Apple hosted the grand opening of its largest store in the world, right here in London's Covent Garden. The new store, which houses every Apple product under the sun and employs hundreds of staff members, opened its doors at 10am on Saturday to a crowd of thousands of Apple devotees.

Spread over three separate floors and composed of a blend of original brickwork and shiny glass elevators, the new store features separate chambers for every kind of Apple product, from iPads, Macs, iPods and iPhones to software and accessories.

There's also a kids area, with demos of educational software and Macs playing Lego Star Wars to indoctrinate their supple little minds. Customers can take their new products to be tinkered with by the resident Apple experts in setup room, and of course there's a great big Genius Bar.

Some of the Apple fans had queued outside for nearly 24 hours. We talked to Rosalie Williams, who held the prestigious position of being first in the queue. She'd been queuing since 10am on the previous day, an experience we could certainly relate to.

"I'm a bit tired," Rosalie admitted. "I closed my eyes during the night but didn't sleep. We have sleeping bags with us, and books for my dissertation which didn't really get read...

"Overnight you get a lot of drunk people, but in the morning you get all this, the chanting and the clapping. I think it's amazing. It's always a guy at the front for launches and store openings, and I said, 'You know what? It should be a girl.' Think different, that's what I'm saying."

CNET UK was on hand to take some photos of the launch and our guided tour around the many cavernous chambers of the new shop. Click the image above to check out our snaps and don't forget to let us know your thoughts in the comments below, or on our Facebook page.

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Twenty minutes before the doors open, the Apple Store staff are crowding around the windows, cheering at the fans massing outside.

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Ten minutes to kick-off, and the staff have come outside to shake hands with Steve Jobs' faithful acolytes. High fives are liberally applied.

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Once the doors open, our guided tour could begin. We were amazed at the sheer volume of staff on hand at the launch. This is the Mac area, where customers can peruse Apple's laptops and computers.

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The iPhone area seemed to be the most popular.

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Inside, there was something of a carnival atmosphere, particularly among the staff, seen here dancing in front of a daunting wall of iPads.

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This is the setup room, where customers bring their new purchases to be readied for use by staff.

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This is the iPad room. It's just a bigger version of the iPhone room.

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This is the Genius Bar. These dudes mend your stuff.

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This is the briefing room -- a separate area for meetings with small businesses. If you run a small team and fancy kitting them all out with iPhones, this is the place to be.