Well, after a full day of recovery following the trip to Neale and Helen’s house (which may or may not have been followed up with beer pong during the Canada-Russia World Junior opening game) we decided to make a trip into the city and to meet my friend Laura for some skating later in the evening on the Tuesday (the 28th). As I mentioned before, skating in London is actually hilarious. I’m not amazing by any standard, and if I was back home I would be horrendous compared to most other people, but here I look like some kind of a super star; this is especially true when doing a cross-over which Brits just cannot fathom. I also wore my Canada Olympic mitts that I received from my parents for Christmas, which of course didn’t add any pressure to perform well at all. I was actually pleased with how well I did, considering it was only my second time out this year. There was also an unfortunate misty rain occurring at the same time so I had to squeegee my glasses a couple of times to see properly. Though, this did lead to slightly funny spills by Brits falling into a puddle on the ice and getting soaked…I’m a bad person.
Following our skating trip we decided a true trip was in order and settled on Greenwich as our destination. This was a place that I was really interested in going to since I got here but I just never found the excuse to make the trek over. Luckily London Walks does walking tours of Greenwich a couple of times a week so Jer and I got ourselves mixed up into one of those tours and was it ever worth it. The payment included the tour as well as the price of the boat ride down the Thames towards Greenwich. It was a rather rainy, gloomy, and cold day out (becoming more and more common but very London-like in recent days) so the boat trip was not particularly enjoyable. Once we reached the other side however the history of this beautiful area of London began to unravel at our feet. We began at the Cutty Sark, a very famous British tea ship from the 19th century that was extremely fast. Unfortunately it was under restoration until 2012 (for some reason everything in the city is under some kind of restoration or renovation until 2012 specifically…is there something going on?) We headed from here into the main high street area which is full of beautiful old London architecture and lots of churches. It has a very small town feel to it even though it is directly connected to and considered a borough of London. It’s far enough out and is full of lots of green space though so you do not feel as if you are in London at all. We wandered through the town streets and through the Greenwich Market where vendors are flogging anything from books to coins, medals, housewares, and albums. We eventually made our way up to the more historic aspects of Greenwich beginning with Greenwich Common. This common is a giant green space that literally made me awe as I stood and looked at it. There were rolling hills in every direction and tree lined paths that looked as if they belonged confined to a frame on the wall of a home. Everything invariably led upwards to the Royal Observatory at the top of the highest hill in the common, more on this in a bit. We made our way around the old Royal Naval Academy (which then became a Naval pensioners hospital before coming to its current existence as part of Greenwich University), past The Trafalgar Tavern which serves its famous Whitebait Dinners enjoyed in the past by Prime Ministers such as Gladstone and famous Londoners such as Dickens. We ended the guided part of the tour right in front of the Welcome Centre beside a statue of Sir Walter Raleigh before being let loose to explore on our own.
Jeremy and I headed directly back to The Trafalgar Tavern for a photo op with the statue of Admiral Horatio Nelson himself before tucking into an ale and the Whitebait dinner. Now, Whitebait are tiny little fish that are native to the Thames and they just fry the suckers whole and serve up a pile of them on a plate with a small salad. They were actually absolutely delicious and come with a really good paprika mayo to dip them in. Although extremely filling it is definitely something I would like to try again at some point.
Once lunch was finished we made our way up the hills to work off the Whitebait and arrive at the Royal Observatory. I had already learned a lot about the observatory through a book I got in the Times one Saturday a little while back. The book, entitled “Longitude”, was about the race to find longitude so that ships could track their position more effectively. The book discusses the many parts of the observatory, the clocks of James Harrison (who eventually solved the longitude problem), as well as the red ball that drops from the top of the building (New Year’s Eve style) to mark 1:00pm GMT. This was a way for everyone in London to be able to either set their watches appropriately or know the time if they could not afford a watch. To be able to see all of these things was really cool after reading so much about them and visualizing what they looked like. The other obvious part of the observatory is the Prime Meridian. The point that marks where longitude begins, east meets west, and what determines our time zones. It was truly bizarre to be literally standing on the opposite side of the world as Jeremy for a moment and also to be standing on both sides of the world at the same time. It’s really corny and touristy but you couldn’t help but get caught up in the excitement of something so bizarre. We had a quick photo op at the Meridian (the queue was HUGE) and made our way back down to the Naval Museum. There were some interesting collections here but I’m not too interested in a lot of marine based history. They hold the actual uniform that Nelson was shot in, blood stains and all still visible, but it was out of the museum for restoration to be returned in…..you guessed it..2012! It began to get dark at this point and so we packed it in and headed back to Colliers Wood.
Greenwich was a really beautiful area and I really want to visit it again at some point in the Spring or Summer when it’s nicer weather (hopefully on a bright, sunny day) to enjoy the hustle and bustle of it all. We also missed out on a couple of areas to go in and view so I’d like to hit those as well…it gives me a great excuse to return that’s for sure!
Next up: a couple days off but culminating in New Years in London!
Until then…
Cheers and love,
Erik
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