Wouldn't the global financial system be less vertiginous, less bizarre, if your money actually stood for something?
But at Sliema on the mainland a series of pools offer a charming and less vertiginous alternative.
Over the cycle the effect is neutral, but the timing of the provisioning should make the troughs less deep and the peaks less vertiginous.
"We've done the Pyg Track before, we just thought it would be like that," says one of them, referring to another, much less vertiginous, route up Snowdon.
The view is still superb – we're just above Nevsky Prospect, St Petersburg's answer to Oxford Street – but this is more about walking than climbing, with four courtyards linking wider, less vertiginous roofs.
The arid, rocky, Cabo de Gata nature reserve has many spectacular beaches, but this one's dramatic setting, kilometre of soft sand, crystalline turquoise water and wealth of fish and rock formations to snorkel over, more than make up for the name (beach of the dead) and the short, steep path – or a longer less vertiginous one – down to the shore.
If, as some contend, Toblerone was modeled on the soaring pyramid of a mountain — the Matterhorn on the Italian-Swiss border, which is about 14,690 feet high — Poundland's bar was said to have been inspired by two less vertiginous hills in the English county of Shropshire near the border with Wales — the Ercall, at 460 feet, and the Wrekin, at 1,335 feet.
And the view is much less vertiginous — you're hovering about 65 feet over the action at the Garden, compared with 108 feet at Ashe, where fans have been known to feel as if they were trying to eavesdrop from outer space.
Adrenaline peak A winter classic such as the Aonach Eagach ridge above Glencoe provides a constant low-level adrenaline flow from the moment you step on to the ridge until, two totally committed miles later, your cramponed boots move on to less vertiginous terrain.
