4/28 Greenwich and the Queen's House

It's a long trip to Greenwich from Hammersmith.  You get on the tube and go all the way to Tower Hill.  Then you walk to another tube station and get on the tube that takes you to the Docklands Rail.  That is above ground over the Thames and several canals.  John said Disney would be proud - most of these trains are driven remotely.  Once you get to the Greenwich station, then you walk about a mile through town and up a steep hill to the Royal Observatory and that is where the meridian time line is.  We had a great tour and the tour guide should be on stage he was that good.

Then we walked down to the Queen's House.  It is on the site where Henry VIII and Elizabeth I were born but it was in a different building.  This one was new - finished in 1675!  Beautiful building and great art exhibit going on.  You weren't allowed to take pictures but John snuck one in of the Tulip Staircase which is entirely self supporting.  Here's the illicit picture:  Isn't that beautiful?  Oh, by the way, the queen doesn't live there, in fact no one does now.

 

The other very interesting thing about this building is that when it was built in the 1600's, it was built over a road!  One side of it on one side of the road and the other on the other side and connected in the middle by the upper stories.  Here is a picture of how it looks today.  It apparently was a very important road!!

Anyway, we had been walking forever.  So we again found another pub, had a draft and sat for about 30 minutes and walked forever more to the Greenwich station, took the two tubes, walked to the grocery store and walked the .8 miles home with our groceries.  The stores are packed with commuters at that time getting their evening meals, I think it's because the refrigerators are so small here, you really can't keep more than a few days groceries in it at a time, so everyone shops on the way home. 

Here's one other picture  - and we literally have hundreds (look on www.theklube.smugmug.com) more that I really wanted to put on for you.  John and I had taken a two story bus in the City to go home and we were sitting in the front seats on the top level when we realized all we could see coming and going was red busses.  Between some of these there really were cars!