River Cruise to Greenwich

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Day 10: A Mixed day

Today I took the river cruise to Greenwich.

I should mention before I begin that before coming to England one of the first "day trips" I had planned was Greenwich. I had been looking forward to seeing the Maritime Museum, the Prime Meridian and Greenwich. Unfortunately, I found Greenwich to be disappointing. The National Maritime Museum is being renovated, so much of their displays on the 2nd and 3rd floors are closed to the public. The Cutty Sark is still being repaired since the devastating fire in 2007, but that I knew prior to going to England. I had been so looking forward to seeing the Sark and was disappointed to read that they'd pushed the re-launch date to spring 2012. After leaving the National Maritime Museum (mainly because the fire alarm had been pulled), I walked up the two steep inclines to Royal Observatory, only to find that in order to stand on the "marked" Prime Meridian I would have to pay 10 pounds. Regardless of whether I did anything else. As you can image, that was a little steep for me, and I didn't do it. So it ended up being an extremely long walk...for nothing.

The high light of my day was the river cruise, oh and a squirel. So the squirel first. I was sitting on a park bench enjoying the senary before my second climb he observatory, when a couple of kids stopped and were motioning towards me. My attention had been on a bird on the branch to my right. I looked down to where they'd been pointing to find a squirel looking up at me. Looks like he was looking for food. All I had was water. I offered, he sniffed then ran under my bench. Guess it wasn't good enough for him. On my way down, I did see some young children feeding him.

Now the cruise. On my way to Greenwich we had one of the crew doing a colour commentary on the sites that could be seen from the river. The trip down was spectacular. The sights were amazing and he gave fun facts. Like pointing out the stairs the Queen Elizabeth I used to board a ship to go out to Sir Drake's ship after he'd returned from circumventing the earth. Or the bar where Charles Dickens was said to have gone to. Or the area that was believed to have inspired Oliver Twist. It was relaxing and an enjoyable experience. It was also a nice and different way to see the city. Oh my way back, I had an audio commentary, which I could barely hear and didn't enjoy as much. Glad I got a good experience going down, otherwise would have been a bust.

When I returned, I got off at Tower Pier. I explored the old church that is right beside the Tower. It was amazing. The church is so old and has so much history. They have a crypt underneath, which has been turned into a museum. They have sections of original Roman roads, and pieces of inscriptions that were left in walls and crypts from what is believed the Roman time in England. They had books of marriage and birth "certificates" dating back to the 1600s. It was amazing to touch some of it and to see others. The history was unbelievable.

I wondered around the area for a little bit. The old streets and buildings are amazing. I wonder sometimes how many Londoners actually take the time to appreciate what's around them, or if it's just so old hat to them that it doesn't even faze them any more. Can't say I blame them, if you've lived in a place long enough, you tend to not notice things any more.

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Photos

Greenwich
Greenwich Mean Time