Thursday 17 July 2014
London

After a late night, we all slept in this morning. It took us some time to get out the door, but a glorious day greeted us when we did. A short train stop took Robyn and I to Maze Hill train station; and then we walked to Greenwich Royal observatory. This place is a museum for astronomy, time and seafaring. Of course, it has the Meridian Line (0 degrees longitude) running through the middle of one of the buildings on site. The place has a big collection of ship's chronometers and clocks, a telescope in the observatory; and a big education centre chock full of school kids pushing buttons and yelling at each other.

The best part though, was whinging about lunch at the café. It is run by two Indians who used to be street sweepers. I got lukewarm tomato soup with a stale bread roll (from a pile of about 5 dozen stale rolls), and a scone that was made last Thursday. It was so bad that Robyn got a cheese scone instead. She chose badly. Still, the Indians kept selling this stuff to other unsuspecting customers. They will be selling this stuff until everybody in Greenwich has indigestion.

We soldiered on to the queen's house down the bottom of the hill.

The view from the observatory. That's the queen's house in the middle. The museum is on the left, and the right wing is used for offices. The background is not the centre of London; it's just a suburb really.


This place was started in about 1616 by Queen Ann and James 1; and took 20 years to finish. Today, it has an art gallery inside showing mainly war artists work. Many of these were scenes from naval battles,  showing planes, ships and a few submarines. As usual, they were all very good. I was taken by the pen and ink drawings, which were done in the 1700s.

The Greenwich Maritime Museum is connected to the queen's house by an arcade. This is a very large place. It doesn't have many boats, but it has  a big ship in a bottle. A child could crawl inside if the cork was removed.

 

Not a bad effort. I just wonder who drank all the rum in the bottle......

Inside, there was lots of other stuff; from military medals to ships mastheads. Also, there is a huge map of the world - perhaps 20 metres across.

 

Those bloody kids are walking all over Africa. I don't suppose they had a visa for Australia.

 

 A river "Barge" belonging to a former Prince of Wales was a major display.

There are places for twenty rowers, and seven passengers. The prince could have water ski-ed on the Thames if he was in the mood.

 

 

 

We walked through the naval history of Britain, which showed paintings of battles and ships. I saw the coat Nelson was wearing when he was shott the battle of Trafalgar. It has a hole in it.

 

The museum also had displays on slavery, and on trade. England of course, had a huge empire and traded goods around the world. This made England the world's second superpower (Rome was the first). All very impressive, but too much to take in during one visit. I had to sit down for a while; Robyn soldiered on and looked through a few more rooms before we went out via the museum shop. That was enough for one day.

 

We walked back to the train station, and rode to Westcombe Park. This was only one stop, but too far to walk in our fatigued state. The rail system is quite easy to use; our Oyster Cards ( which are the same as Brisbane's Go cards) can be used on the underground and overland trains, London buses, and the river ferries.

 

Another day in london has passed .There are still more things to see and do in this town, so watch this space.

 

 

Lex and Robyn