Greenwich

Today was another exciting day. We headed to Greenwich, which isn’t very far from where we are living at all. Upon arrival we did some sightseeing and then headed through a tunnel to get to the other side of the Thames. We then took a look at some of the buildings/museums. First we went through a church and then through another building that I can’t quite remember the name of right now. Each building was quite impressive and the pictures I took of them do them no justice. Our tour guide/professor Phillipa shared so many interesting things with us about the places. She is quite fantastic.

After going through those places we took a 15 minute break. During that time we looked through the National Maritime Museum briefly. It seemed pretty neat from what we saw. After that we headed to the Queen’s house and walked through a few of the rooms. We didn’t get to go through it all because someone was having a lunch in one of the rooms so I’ll probably go back another time and have a look because it was pretty neat. Once we saw that we had an hour break for lunch. Several of us had packed our lunches so we went to a little café and each got a drink and ate our lunch. It was an adorable little place. It’s quite fun to find little places like the one we found. This one was particularly cute because the ceiling was made out of glass and we could see outside and all around us. It looked beautiful outside today though it was quite nippy. But while inside looking out it was a really nice view. After we enjoyed out lunch and warming up we headed out to look at this little café we saw earlier. It was a pottery shop/café and we all thought it was adorable so we are already in the midst of planning another trip out there to paint some pottery!

After lunch we had to meet at the top of the hill where the Royal Observatory is located. The Royal Observatory was by far my favorite part of the day. It was simply fascinating and the views were incredible. At the Royal Observatory you can actually be in two hemispheres at once because the prime meridian runs through the middle of it so we had fun taking pictures of that. There was also an incredible area where a picture of the central area of Greenwich was able to be displayed on a table. This is sort of hard to explain but basically when you went in this room the picture was displayed on the table and it was what was actually happening. It was a moving picture of real life…we could actually see the people who were down there and the cars and boats moving. It was really neat and something I would recommend everyone sees. We went through a few more exhibits there and then had free time until we had to catch our boat tour. Phillipa recommended that we check out the Greenwich market so that’s where Jeana and I headed. It was a cute little place.

It was then time to head back home. We took a boat tour back. It was quite windy out so it made it really chilly when we sat on top of the boat but it was the best way to see the city. We were all pretty cold by the end of the tour and ready to head back home to warm up. One thing that never fails is that the tube is super warm and today we were all glad that it was. Once we got back home we were starving so Jeana and I made another fantastic dinner (spaghetti, salad, and garlic bread). Then we all just hung out and rested after a long day. We had a group meeting at 9:30 and then us girls came back and are now watching a movie that is pretty interesting so far.

Tomorrow I’m going to the National Gallery with the Art History class in the morning and then a group of us are going to go purchase some theater tickets for the evening. We aren’t sure what we are going to see yet but it’s probably going to be whatever we can get the best deal on! After that we might do a little shopping around the city and enjoy the day. The weekend officially starts tomorrow and we have so many things we want to do. Nothing is officially planned so I’m sure we’ll spend some time figuring that out tomorrow!