Sat, 15 Mar 2003

author Tim	location Spittalfields, London, England
posted 16:26 GMT 18/03/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/UK/England/London/Working in London 1 ( all photos )

Greenwich ( 37 photos )
Now that Liz has easily taken the cake for the longest website update in history, I'm back to tell you about our weekend and how this week is shaping up - rather well! Saturday we awoke and were once again living the care-free life, wondering just what to do with ourselves. So many options! After the success of last time, we once again took a walk as recommended in our Eccentric London book (thanks Peter Bowyer for this - we're getting lots of use out of it!).
This time we went down to Greenwich. Famous as the Greenwich in "Greenwich Mean Time", Liz dutifully stood with a foot in either hemisphere (that's east and west, not north and south!) as part of our view around the place.
Since there's quite a lot to do, we decided that since it was such a nice day, we would do all the outside things, and leave the interesting things for the far more common days when it is raining cats and dogs.
We walked from our new home down to the nearest tube station at Kilburn, where we jumped on the Jubilee line. This is a line which has only recently been extended, and now offers a great fast trip across London.
We got off at the huge and truly impressive Canary Wharf station, which has won lots of design awards, before going on the Docklands Light Railway. This was Liz's first trip on this tram-like thing which operates without a driver, and sitting right at the front as we plunge at 60mph into a black tunnel (no headlights needed, of course), it's great fun. The DLR took us down to Greenwich station where we aimed to start our walk, but promptly got lost straight from the station!
Improvising our way around, our walk eventually took in plenty of sites around Greenwich, including the impressive and history-rich St Alfege Church, the family-run for many years Goddard's Pie House (where we grabbed some great hot fruit pies), the Cutty Sark, and quite a few different market areas.
We walked through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel across to the Isle of Dogs, which our guidebook pointed out has a heavily-reinforced section at the North end where a German bomb struck it in World-War II. The dripping part in the middle didn't inspire a lot of confidence either. But there is a lift at each end which is still operated by a man who presses the buttons for you! Don't see that very often.
The view South from the Isle of Dogs towards Greenwich is really breath-taking, especially on a great day like we had. See the view of the Royal Naval College, for example.
We went quickly back through the tunnel before heading along the waterfront looking at the great little pubs and old almshouses. Great views back towards the Millennuim Dome as well, even though it's not used for anything.
Wandering then South-ward, we entered Greenwich park where there was a great big sundial smack-bang on the meridian which was actually fairly accurate.
Ambling through the chilly breeze up on top of the hill, we battled the crowds near the Old Royal Observatory to see the "offical" place where time and location start on the planet, as well as the "offical" set of imperial measures, should you ever want to use such a thing. The huge numbers of people there discouraged us from entering, and we still had a bit of wandering around to do anyway!
Passing back through the pack, we turned down the offers of the London Fan Museum (that's fans as in hand-held, wave back-and-forth to cool yourself fans) on our way to grab those fruit pies and check out some last bits of markets before returning to the station, stopping to check some notably strange architecture along the way.
There are a few strange shops down there, including the "Junk Shop", which is very accurately named, and a couple of places specialising in strange, best-forgotten 50s-80s memorabilia that I had to literally drag Liz out of. "No Liz, we don't need those pink flamingo lights, and perhaps we can wait until after we buy a kombi to get the fluffy dice!"
Back in Cricklewood, we were walking home and walked past a video shop we had not previously noted. Choosing a DVD for the night, we were then amazed as the young French lad showed us how we can hire a movie twenty-four hours a day by using an atm-style machine out the front, which takes credit off our card and spits out the DVD! Returns can similarly be done any time, meaning we only pay for six hours' hire - 99p a movie. That's very cheap for anything over here.
So, we settled down with Nicole and Carlo to watch 40 Days and 40 Nights, which was a nice relaxing evening.

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