We will be spending five weeks in Greenwich starting about two weeks from now, on December 28th, 2010.
My wife & I are in our late 50s. Retired but fit.
The last time we were in Greenwich, for ten days in April, 2009, we went into London frequently. The weather was splendid but were overwhelmed by the crowds of tourists at the big national museums and art galleries - so we are returning to Greenwich at what we hope will be a quieter time.
We will be house-sitting in Greenwich for the last few days of December 2010 and the entire month of January, 2011. It looks like the unusual weather that southern England is experiencing this winter may limit our outdoor activities. We are open to suggestions of other places along the Docklands Light Railway to visit that are close to Greenwich. We will be situated very close to Trafalgar Road and the Maze Hill railway station and relying on public transit.
Binky
Reply to this If you're travelling along the DLR. You could go to Pudding Mill Lane and check out the development of the Olympic Park (there's a little green cabin that they've set up where you can have a coffee inside and watch the developments from there).
The DLR also takes you to Kings Reach - which allows you to take the Woolwich Free Ferry across from the north to south bank. You can then walk along the South Bank for a couple of hours to Greenwich.
The DLR also takes you to Bank where you can walk around the City of London, which is quite interesting.
You might like to wonder up to Shoreditch, where there's a host of bars and galleries. There's also a lot of street art as well (see <snip> ). Wonder down streets like Curtain Road, Brick Lane, Commercial Street, Leonard St, Kingsland Road and Blackall Street.
You might also like to visit Spitalfields (Brick Lane area) which has hosted successive waves of French Huguenot, Jewish and now Bengali immigrants. An incredible place, best summed up by the Brick Lane Mosque, which at one point was a synagogue and before that was a Huguenot church. You can still see French weavers' houses, characterised by wooden shutters, very tall and very thin and French street names.
(See <snip>😉
Finally, it is well worth, if you have not yet had the chance, stopping off at Canary Wharf, and just take a stroll around. You can marvel at the magnitude of the buildings, visit the Docklands Museum and if you want to get away from it all go for a walk around the Isle of Dogs - very nice.
Reply to this Thanks for the suggestions. Its beginning to look like we'll be bringing our snow shovels & winter gear. I hope you people get your weather straightened out before we arrive. We're flying out of Toronto in about 9 or 10 days & hope that the airports around London are into receiving guests. Time to get packing the woolies !! Can you suggest a good place to get a pizza in Greenwich - other than buying the deluxe frozen pizza at the Tesco & fixing it up ??
Mike
Reply to this There's a pizza express in Greenwich, which is a chain but they do really good food.
Really though, apart from Canary Wharf, most of the places ravishlondon listed above take just as long to get to as central london. Greenwich is not very far away from the centre.. if you really don't want to travel far you're kinda limited to Greenwich, Blackheath, Canary Wharf and the O2 arena.
Reply to this Thanks for the reply: Its not that we don't want to travel out of Greenwich - we expect to get to Oxford for a day trip and into London to all of the museums & galleries that were packed with tourists during our last stay in Greenwich, and we will be visiting with a friend in Greenwich who has wheels.
Its just that we realise that we are going to be over there for a full five weeks, thats 35 days, and if the unusual weather southern England has been experiencing continues into the new year it may confine us to the Greenwich area at some time. And Deptford once a week for pub night. Also we will be looking after a cat in Greenwich that likes to get his meds twice daily so we won't be wandering too far away from the area. We can go where we want but we just need to get back to Greenwich every evening.
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