Greenwich- the middle of the world (kind of)!

Well, on November 11th, Remembrance Day over here, Veteran's Day in American, instead of waking up early and spending hours standing with hundreds and hundreds of people to catch a glimpse of the Queen, and try and see the rows of Vets marching down the road, I decided to sleep in a little, and then go out to Greenwich for the day!  It's very easy to get to, and I can use my Oyster Card since it's in Zone 2 of the London public transportation system!  

So about 40ish minutes from Central London (it's still technically London, a district in a Royal Borough), is where you can find Cutty Sark, The Prime Meridian and the Maritime Museum, among other attractions that I did not see.

First I did Cutty Sark since it would take the least amount of time and was the closest to the DLR station.

Cutty Sark is pretty cool.  It's an old tea clipper, one of the last surviving ones, from the mid 1800s.  It was just reopened in April 2012 after about 6 years of conservation work- as well as repair work caused by a fire in 2007.

 It traveled all around the globe, to China, to Australia, and everywhere in between for various trades- tea and wool mainly.  She's pretty much been in dry dock sine the 1950s and a museum almost as long.

The Maritime Museum was also pretty cool- basically the history of water travel in Europe- but mainly focusing on Britain, obviously, although the vikings and older exhibit was closed for renovations and some new exhibit.  One of the highlights we seeing Admiral Nelson's uniform that he was shot , and died, in.  You can see the bullet hole in it, although the bloody waistcoat is covered by the coat.  Another really cool exhibit was the Ansel Adams photography exhibit, which I very much enjoyed, having spent a good chunk of my childhood on family trips around the Western United States. Gorgeous photography, and I'm pretty sure I bought out the  exhibition gift shop....

 Next stop was the Royal Observatory, up on a hill, that made me wish I'd been working out these last few months...  It's actually a very small place, King Charles II did not want to spend a lot of money on it..

Here is where the Prime Meridian is!  This is the line of longitude that has been used as a reference point for the past 150 years or so.  Basically 0 degrees longitude marks the middle of the world, on a map, when looking at one in terms of latitude and longitude. (the middle of the map vertically, not horizontally)

There are some pretty cool views of London from a lookout point, but the main thing people come to see here is the Prime Meridian.

These 3 pictures above show the telescopes that keep the Prime Meridian where it is, they keep it from changing.  It's 2 telescopes- one on either side of the room, with enormous an mechanism in the middle.  I have no idea how any of it works, but it looks pretty cool.

Walking back to the DLR station, I saw this gem of a car- I wish I had gotten a video because it was playing some pretty spectacular music.  I believe all of these decorations are stickers, and whoever this car belonged to, was selling Christmas Cards.

I loved Greenwich and would definitely visit again, and I recommend it to everyone who is going to, or wants to, visit London!

Brighton 21st Oct 2012

This one will be slightly shorter than the last as we, Brittany and I, only spent a half day in Brighton.  It's only about 1.5 hours or so by direct train, which is nice.  The day we picked was grey, chilly and slightly rainy.  However, I liked Brighton, it's a nice little town, much like Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard, but with a little bit of carnival thrown in, like from Atlantic City/Ocean City, etc... with the boardwalk atmosphere.

The first thing we did was walk down from the train station along the water to try and find the Royal Pavilion which was the main reason we went down there in the first place.  We wandered by the pier and finally turned around and headed into the town part.  This is where the Martha Vineyard/Nantucket aspect comes in as they're old buildings with old and new shops in them, along with pubs, restaurants, hotels, b&bs, etc... There was a Nordic bar/restaurant on the same street as a Baby Gap- just a few doors down.  A nice mix of old and new.

The Royal Pavilion is really cool. It was built in the early 1800s for George IV as a getaway from London.  You aren't allowed to take pictures inside, so this is the link to its website: http://www.brighton-hove-rpml.org.uk/royalpavilion/aboutthepalace/pages/home.aspx 

The inside looked like it came out of a China/India/Asia hybrid.  There were dragons, bamboo, red and gold wallpapers, oriental drawings and decorations, and, as always in a palace, wonderfully outfitted rooms to just look at in awe.  The Indian aspect comes from the architecture of the building itself, it kind of looks like a miniature Taj Mahal, because of the way the domes were, which I guess doesn't really mean it looks like it, that was only a helpful guide, as it is white stone with the dome that is associate with the Taj Mahal.

That tour took about 45min (We walked fast and didn't take the audio guides), and afterwards we walked down to the Pier where I proceeded to lose about 4 pounds to the multitude of arcade and carnival games that were present.  They had the classic ones like trying to knock the cans off, and everything.  I almost won the game where you had the roll balls through different colors to make the dolphin move, but some kids dropped his ball and I accidentally kicked it while trying to move it closer to his mom, so I gave him one of mine. (she replaced it with the one he dropped and thanked me).  oh well.  Inside the buildings on the pier it's like 1000 types of 1 game.  The one you see at places like Chuck E. Cheese's where you drop a coin in and it rolls down to the ledge and gets pushed off onto another ledge and all the coins are hanging off the end and you keep putting coins in waiting for all of them to come down?  Yeah....  oh well, you played with 2p coins that you could get from a machine- I didn't realize this at first when I put a pound coin in and 50 coins started pouring out into the slot.  That's about all we did, Brittany watched as I lost money, and then we walked around the pier to look at the different rides and attractions, watched the crazy seagulls divebomb a couple of people for their food, and then we went to JB's Diner for dinner because it was an American diner.

Well we both ordered milkshakes , she got banana and I got mint chocolate chips.  It.was.so.good!   We also ordered southern fried chicken fingers.... the first time they came out it looked like grilled chicken wings so we sent it back.  The second time it was right , but they looked like Burger king's chicken fries...which doesn't mean they were mad, just not even close to what I was expecting.  They were actually pretty good! The cheesy fries not so much.  And then we went to the train station, began making plans for Thanksgiving- mashed potatoes, sweet potato pie, pumpkin pie, and apple pie.  We think it sounds good!

All in all a good day and a good end to a pretty fun weekend!

Canterbury Cathedral 20 Oct 2012

Apologies for not keeping up with my blog!  I'm finally starting to study some....


Last weekend was super busy, mainly in terms of traveling.  On the 20th of October I went to Canterbury with a couple of friends which was super fun!  And on the 21st I went to Brighton with another friend.  Brighton was really cool because I had never been before, but Canterbury was fun because the last time I was there I was on a tour and so everything was timed.  So. Canterbury first.

We left London around 11ish since we missed the train we wanted by about 1 min.  Literally 1 min...  It's about a 1 1/2 hour train ride give or take, which is nice, and it was a direct train- no changing anywhere which is always nice.  We got there and the first thing we did was look for something to eat since we missed brunch, and it was lunch time when we got into town.  We ended up at a pizza hut because it was fast, and who doesn't love pizza hut pizza?  We had looked at a couple of other places, but paying 10 bucks for a a main dish at a Mexican restaurant just doesn't sit well with me...

So we walked on to the Cathedral since that was the main reason we traveled there.  Like the first time I went, this Cathedral is magnificent!  You go through this archway and it's like BAM! 1000 year old Cathedral!    Even if you're not studying history (like the 3 of us are) it's still really amazing to look at it and think, damn. this has been here for 1000 years.

Stepping inside is like a time warp, (If you ignore all of the tourists and displays, etc...) The stained glass windows are amazing and the stonework is phenomenal. (Yes I realize that it sounds like I'm using a thesaurus, but there are just so many words to describe this place!)  The way that you're supposed to go is in a big circle around the cathedral and then there's the crypt in the middle.  So that's what we did.  There's a lot of really cool burial memorial/stone coffins of archbishops, the shrine of Thomas a Beckett (St. Thomas a Beckett), King Henry IV and his wife Joan of Navarre, Edward the Black Prince , etc... so as someone studying European History (Or really any history, or any subject...) this place is really, really cool.

The spot where Thomas a Beckett was murdered

Where the shrine to Thomas a Beckett used to be

King Henry IV and Joan of Navarre

The Black Prince

 Most of the following pictures are of the older sections of the cathedral and of the Norman Ruins which I did not get to see on my tour 4 years ago, so it was pretty cool.

  We also wandered around looking for the Canterbury Tales museum, which was supposedly very cheesy but very awesome, but it cost like 6-8 pounds so we decided to skip that.  I might go back in the Spring, who knows?   At that point, the 2 people I was with went on to the Norman castle and I went back to London to have dinner with an old CISV friend I hadn't seen since our interchange in 2000!  I know it's crazy right?  Since I've been here I've seen 2 of the British people from my interchange that I haven't seen in 12 years, and 1 person I haven't seen in 14 years, who was one of the JCs in my village in 1998.  Yes 1998.  A long time ago.