Gypsy Living: Greenwich

Next up, a boat ride! After realizing we needed a full day to get back and forth from Greenwich, we opted for a ferry ride from Westminster to Greenwich. It was a great way to see the city and take in the sites from a different perspective. It definitely helped that is was yet another beautiful sunny spring day!

Getting ready to go:

Our views along the way:

St. Paul's and the Millennium Bridge, both Daria and I wondered if we were going to be able to make it across it in a few days.

Shakespeare's Globe Theater

London Bridge and the cheese grater building. London's skyline is a pretty cool combo of old and new buildings

Def not as impressive as the Tower Bridge

There is a story that says an American was duped into buying the original London Bridge in the sixties (thinking it was the iconic Tower Bridge). The Bridge, while not falling down, was sinking and couldn't handle the increasing transportation demands in London. I asked the Google, and apparently this is a myth. While the London Bridge is in Arizona now, and a rich American did buy it and rebuild it, he apparently was aware which bridge he was buying and was simply just a bit on the eccentric side. (I checked US and UK sources on this one just to be sure...) The bridge is now in Lake Havasu City and is the second most visited tourist destination in Arizona, second only to the Grand Canyon.

In case you missed it, there's the Shard (the finger was not intentional)

The Tower Bridge really is beautiful, and it's actually hard to capture its impressiveness on camera.

Along the way, we were treated to some colorful stories along the Thames - ranging from the pub where a famous judge used to enjoy a pint while watching his condemned criminals drown as the tide came in to an old apt owned by Cher.

view of the old Royal Naval College form the water, also the birthplace of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I

Greenwich was yet another bigger place that we expected, and we were glad we had the full day to take it in. We started by climbing the hill to the Royal Observatory and then checked out the museum.

and the view from the top of the hill where the Royal Observatory sits

another selfie!

Our main goal was to visit the Prime Meridian, but the museum at the Royal Observatory was actually really interesting and talked about the concept of time and how people started keeping time, and of course how the Prime Meridian was established. They had another audio tour, and while it did have some interesting info, we both agreed it was not as well planned as the ones at Westminster Abbey or the Tower on London. Some fun tidbits we learned that I remembered, with a little help from Google to fill in the pieces:

The location of the prime meridian is relatively arbitrary. It was voted on in 1884 primarily because the US had already based it's national time on Greenwich Time, and over 70% of the world's commerce at the time depended on sea charts using Greenwich as the Prime Meridian. Now, the true Prime Meridian agreed upon by every nation is 102.5 meters east of the historic prime meridian (based on new satellite data).

Standing on the Prime Meridian. This baby hasn't seen the light of day yet, but has already been on the equator and the prime meridian!

oh yes, we were tourists

The time ball was one of the earliest time signals to ships and used to be dropped every hour on the hour. Today, the time ball is dropped everyday at 13:00. The ball is actually really dented now since when they took the ball down to do some renovations, they forgot to tell the workmen that the ball was going back up. They used it as a soccer ball until someone saw them and had them stop!

the big red ball

The Shepard Gate Clock was first public clock to post Greenwich Mean Time, using a 24-hour dial.

After the Royal Observatory, we headed into town and had a really nice lunch at a local pub and then wandered around a little. It was bustling for a Saturday afternoon and we stumbled across our first Saturday Market that was PACKED. From clothes to food, everything looked awesome. If I'd had room I def would've gone for the mini-pancakes!

On the boat ride home, we actually used Daria's umbrella for the first time! Proof that it actually does rain in London in April....We arrived at our port a little early so the guides gave us a few more minutes to take in Parliament from the water. We just don't have beautiful buildings like this in the US.