Day 6 - London (even more)
So we caught a boat on the Thames to Greenwich (pronounced Gren-itch).
The boat went under Tower Bridge:
I had the GPS out, so here's the route we took:
Kristina was impressed by the barges parked along the way that
seemed to have gardens growing in them:
We could have used one of these signs back in Maryland, after the ice cream
man's 100th repetition of "Turkey in the Straw":
Trust me, a "Humped Pelican crossing" isn't as exciting as it sounds.
Nor is a Zebra crossing for that matter.
We passed by the site of the
Cutty Sark (the world's last tea clipper) but it was entirely
encased for restoration so you couldn't actually see it.
We then climbed up a relatively big hill to the
Greenwich
Observatory. Note the clock behind me is a 24-hour clock.
Here's my GPS showing a lot of zeros for the Longitude:
Here's the Observatory itself, with the ball that dropped at noon every day
so the ships could synchronize their clocks:
Here I am straddling the prime meridian, half in the western hemisphere
and half in the eastern:
There was an interesting exhibit here on
John Harrison and his marine chronometers, which vastly improved
shipboard navigation in the 19th century.
From the hill you could see the Millennium Dome (people in England
were apparently excited by the new millennium):
We took the boat back to Tower Hill, and then rushed a bit
because we had a musical to see. We went to the
Theatre Royal on Drury Lane (home of the Muffin Man) to see
(don't laugh) The Lord of the Rings, the
Musical. I bet you didn't know such a thing existed; just one
of the consequences of having a LOTR fan along:
The musical wasn't bad, and had good special effects and a neat rotating
stage. The theatre itself was unbearably hot, even with the souvenir
hand-fans they gave us.
Afterward we walked back to the hostel, which seemed like a long way
after such a busy day. Upon getting in we immediately went to sleep.
Continue on to Day 7 in London