Greenwich - The Meridian of the World

Today we decided to visit Greenwich. We did hope to catch the Docklands light rail as we had not been on that before, but it was closed for routine maintenance. Oh well there is always next time, so we took the tube bus replacement service that was in place. It meant we got to see more of the Canary Wharf and Quay areas than we would have on the train.


It also meant that we were able to cross the thames via the walking tunnel underneath (built in 1902) to Greenwich - we had no idea it even existed!

We walked around for a bit, its quite a busy little place for Sunday tourists, lots of little markets and antique shops. We had lunch in a little pub called The Spaniard and then walked over and visited the Queens House - which is great if you love portraits of famous naval officers (snore....) - but they did have a huge quite interesting painting of the Battle of Trafalgar that was definitely worth seeing.

We then hiked up Maze hill to the Greenwich Old Royal Observatory where the worlds time is set. Its a great view of the city from there (see above) and the little museum, though mainly about time, clocks and how we came to be able to measure latitude and longitude, is quite good.

After that we decided to wander towards the North Greenwich tube station, along the Thames walk. Hmmm well thats an interesting walk, one that I would not take on my own nor anytime after dark. It's past lots of industrial buildings, old shipping yards, the entrance to the Blackwall tunnel and we hardly saw a soul the whole way. The Millennium dome is there but its currently being developed for housing, so its currently a giant construction site dotted with strange Colusseum like buildings...not sure what they are for... But in the end we made it back to West Hampstead safely.