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Finally, finally got to Greenwich today, with no wrong connections! Really! I'll get this UK thing down yet.
Decided to cheat just a bit, and took one of the usually-excellent London Walks guided tours, to hedge my bets direction-wise. That didn't start until 11 AM, so I wandered down through Covent Garden and over to the Victoria Embankment, finally locating Seven Dials (where the theatre that shows the Jerry Spring musical is located). Picturesque as all hell. If msbelle ever gets to Covent Garden, she should definitely check out a store called Pink Lizard -- it was VERY her.
The guided walk was £8, but that included the boat ride, which is usually £5. This goes downstream on the Thames, past most of the redeveloped Docklands, which now have some impressive buildings, including a massive office building 800 feet high (I think the Hancock is 500). The Thames has about a 25 foot tide, so we passed craft I would actually termed "ships" laying high and dry during neap.
Greenwich used to be far far downstream, enough to 'get away' from London if you were highly Medieval. That's why it had palaces for the rich and famous Tudors, and got some extra-special Royal attention, including some really cool Palladian mansions and buildings, and later some special public buildings.
We moseyed around the waterfront for a bit -- the actual Cutty Sark (China clipper, not the whiskey) is drydocked there, so we got told the story of why there's a woman in a nightgown, holding a horse's tail as the figurehead. Walked past some neat buildings, stopping to talk about the history of the Thames and the royals, and ended up in front of the Queens House with a splendid view of the Greenwich Observatory at 12:55, just in time to see the now-ceremonial raising and dropping of the orange ball on the mast on top. (Up to half at 5-of, up all the way at 2-of, and dropped at 13:00, that way you had enough time to get your clock ready to be set.) This was from back in the days when ship's captains needed to set their chronometers on Greenwich Mean Time. They also used to fire off a cannon, but they gave up doing that some time ago. I guess it was the "beep! the time is" of its day.
More neat explanations of the Queen's House, various historical figures, the history of Greenwich Observatory, and Mr John Harrison's claiming of the longitude prize later, it was the end of the tour, which has taken 2.5 hours or so, and hadn't felt anything like that long. The guide was kind enough to point out a bunch of good places to eat, enough so that one didn't think he was getting kickbacks (:-)), and I asked where a Chinese place called Noodle Time was, and he said that he was going there himself, he'd be glad for the company. So I got to ask him about the guiding biz, and tell him about American politics and the insanity of the way the death penalty is applied, and before you knew it, 3 PM had come and gone.
So I hurried up to see not nearly enough of the Maritime Museum -- which is really, truly Smithsonian class, every exhibit, and I only saw maybe 15%, was fabulous -- and then quickly across the park and up the hill (oh, and it is a lovely lawn, just the kind you get from regularly cutting the grass over a 400 year period!) to the Observatory museum, which also has a beautiful exhibit of antique astronomy implements and the clocks used in them -- including all four original and working Harrison chronometers!
And there was a speaker giving the entire history of the claiming of the prize, which I knew from reading Longitude (great book, and a very good miniseries, which if you haven't read or seen either, you should ASAP, trust me on this). Alas, I found out too late that they had a camera obscura set up, it was too dim to work. I headed into the Victorian-era observatory and learned that an artist had set up a laser-beam, so that it shoots out 15 miles or so in the exact line of 0'0" -- upon leaving the building, in the dim and slightly damp air, you could see this green beam projecting southward over the London suburbs. It was =so= damn cool, because really it's one thing to be told there's an invisible but very important virtual line, but another to see it somewhat embodied.
I walked back to the waterfront -- it's a wonderful view from on top of that hill, by the way! -- and then under the Thames -- that's right. There's a 1902 pedestrian tunnel under the Thames, about 400 feet wide, which was too cool not to take. Also, you come up on the other side, and there's a really wonderful view of all the buildings and waterfront -- very cool. Even cooler was that if I looked very carefully, I could see that green laser beam shooting out over the buildings until it got lost in the fog....
Then I went and took the Docklands Light Rail back into the City, which was a cool ride in itself, and then to here. Really wanted to get this down, while it's all so fresh.
(The guide showed us where archaeologists dug up a tilting ground last year -- I had A Knight's Tale flashbacks. This is more impressive because it's right in the forecourt of the Queen's House, and was surely where Henry VIII (and a bunch more royals) learned to joust.)
Decided to cheat just a bit, and took one of the usually-excellent London Walks guided tours, to hedge my bets direction-wise. That didn't start until 11 AM, so I wandered down through Covent Garden and over to the Victoria Embankment, finally locating Seven Dials (where the theatre that shows the Jerry Spring musical is located). Picturesque as all hell. If msbelle ever gets to Covent Garden, she should definitely check out a store called Pink Lizard -- it was VERY her.
The guided walk was £8, but that included the boat ride, which is usually £5. This goes downstream on the Thames, past most of the redeveloped Docklands, which now have some impressive buildings, including a massive office building 800 feet high (I think the Hancock is 500). The Thames has about a 25 foot tide, so we passed craft I would actually termed "ships" laying high and dry during neap.
Greenwich used to be far far downstream, enough to 'get away' from London if you were highly Medieval. That's why it had palaces for the rich and famous Tudors, and got some extra-special Royal attention, including some really cool Palladian mansions and buildings, and later some special public buildings.
We moseyed around the waterfront for a bit -- the actual Cutty Sark (China clipper, not the whiskey) is drydocked there, so we got told the story of why there's a woman in a nightgown, holding a horse's tail as the figurehead. Walked past some neat buildings, stopping to talk about the history of the Thames and the royals, and ended up in front of the Queens House with a splendid view of the Greenwich Observatory at 12:55, just in time to see the now-ceremonial raising and dropping of the orange ball on the mast on top. (Up to half at 5-of, up all the way at 2-of, and dropped at 13:00, that way you had enough time to get your clock ready to be set.) This was from back in the days when ship's captains needed to set their chronometers on Greenwich Mean Time. They also used to fire off a cannon, but they gave up doing that some time ago. I guess it was the "beep! the time is" of its day.
More neat explanations of the Queen's House, various historical figures, the history of Greenwich Observatory, and Mr John Harrison's claiming of the longitude prize later, it was the end of the tour, which has taken 2.5 hours or so, and hadn't felt anything like that long. The guide was kind enough to point out a bunch of good places to eat, enough so that one didn't think he was getting kickbacks (:-)), and I asked where a Chinese place called Noodle Time was, and he said that he was going there himself, he'd be glad for the company. So I got to ask him about the guiding biz, and tell him about American politics and the insanity of the way the death penalty is applied, and before you knew it, 3 PM had come and gone.
So I hurried up to see not nearly enough of the Maritime Museum -- which is really, truly Smithsonian class, every exhibit, and I only saw maybe 15%, was fabulous -- and then quickly across the park and up the hill (oh, and it is a lovely lawn, just the kind you get from regularly cutting the grass over a 400 year period!) to the Observatory museum, which also has a beautiful exhibit of antique astronomy implements and the clocks used in them -- including all four original and working Harrison chronometers!
And there was a speaker giving the entire history of the claiming of the prize, which I knew from reading Longitude (great book, and a very good miniseries, which if you haven't read or seen either, you should ASAP, trust me on this). Alas, I found out too late that they had a camera obscura set up, it was too dim to work. I headed into the Victorian-era observatory and learned that an artist had set up a laser-beam, so that it shoots out 15 miles or so in the exact line of 0'0" -- upon leaving the building, in the dim and slightly damp air, you could see this green beam projecting southward over the London suburbs. It was =so= damn cool, because really it's one thing to be told there's an invisible but very important virtual line, but another to see it somewhat embodied.
I walked back to the waterfront -- it's a wonderful view from on top of that hill, by the way! -- and then under the Thames -- that's right. There's a 1902 pedestrian tunnel under the Thames, about 400 feet wide, which was too cool not to take. Also, you come up on the other side, and there's a really wonderful view of all the buildings and waterfront -- very cool. Even cooler was that if I looked very carefully, I could see that green laser beam shooting out over the buildings until it got lost in the fog....
Then I went and took the Docklands Light Rail back into the City, which was a cool ride in itself, and then to here. Really wanted to get this down, while it's all so fresh.
(The guide showed us where archaeologists dug up a tilting ground last year -- I had A Knight's Tale flashbacks. This is more impressive because it's right in the forecourt of the Queen's House, and was surely where Henry VIII (and a bunch more royals) learned to joust.)
