"A visit to Greenwich" Greenwich Travelogue by grandmaR

After breakfast, got the bus to transferred to a bus that went to the Tower station (rode on the top all the way there) which was the one that I determined after considerable map study was the one to go to for the Docklands Light Rail. The streets were relatively quiet this early on Sunday morning.

Stern of Cutty Sark

After we got off the bus, we wended our way up and down and across to the Docklands Light Rail station to go out to Greenwich. None of the trains seemed to be going to that destination. But a non-USA English speaking guy (can't remember now if he was from England or Australia) told us that we'd have to get a train to another station and transfer. He was with a big group. So we did that.

The ride was very interesting. It went across the Isle of Dogs.

The stop we wanted was the Cutty Sark stop, and it was listed as being zone 2/3, so I was a little worried that we might be in trouble as our weekend passes were only good for zone 1 and 2. But later I found information which indicated that either zone 2 OR zone 3 tickets were acceptable. I certainly didn't want to walk through the mile long tunnel under the river. I both didn't want to expend my limited energy in walking that far, and know that there's nothing to see in a tunnel.

When we arrived, We walked around the outside of the Cutty Sark, but Bob didn't think it was worth the admission fee of £3.50 to go on board.

Bob reading the Gypsy Moth information

We walked around the Gypsy Moth which Sir Francis C. did a solo circumnavigation in (and wrote a book about it) and Bob noted that the windlass was in an unusual place. You can't go on board

Observatory from the museum

Then we went to the information building, and they told us we could take a shuttle bus (£1.50 each RT) up to the top of the hill to the observatory, so we did that. It is walkable, but for someone in better shape than I am.

We walked from the parking lot to the observatory. We walked along the prime meridian and looked at the exhibits there.

24 hour clock with length standards

They had the standards for one foot, an English yard etc. below a 24 hour clock.

We also looked at the garden shed where the Astronomer Royal did most of his observations because the observatory building wasn't in quite the right place.

Thames from the observatory

It is a very small site and was a bit crowded. Only the ground floor of the observatory is wheelchair accessible. There are a lot of steps

You can also see up and down the river, including the Millennium Dome. I saw a foreign sailboat sailing slowly up the river. Then we bused back to the National Maritime Museum.

Observatory side of the museum

(the bus driver let us off on the observatory side so we would have less of a walk), and there we had lunch. I had 1/2 roast chicken, squash to drink and a peach thing for dessert. Bob had a sandwich, Sprite/lemonade, and rice pudding for £12.95 total. Squash was something I remember from previous trips, which I like, but this was the first time I'd seen it available. It's kind of a fruit drink.

Inside museum looking down from 1st floor

Then we walked around looking at the exhibits. There were a lot of interactive ones - game type things where you shoot missiles, quiz type ones, and even stuff like a pretend corridor in a ship where they have a persons name and job on the doors (cabin steward, purser, captain) and you open the door and see the uniform that person would wear and hear a recorded message about them and their job. They had model ships, and paintings, dioramas, including two family groups of emigrants with their luggage - one steerage and one-first class. There were also decorated royal barges, and the uniform Nelson wore when he was killed with bullet holes and blood. There's also a library where you can use interactive computers to look up specific exhibits or items of interest. We looked at a lot of the Explorers and the Seapower exhibits.

There are also a lot of paintings, and photography is forbidden in the museum. I didn't know that when I took this picture.

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