England 11: the rest of Greenwich in pictures.

Let’s see of OD will cooperate long enough to knock out the rest of the Greenwich pictures. My membership was up for renewal a couple of weeks ago, and for the first time ever I just did a 6 month membership. I started to not renew at all for awhile in case OD goes completely away, but then I realized this behavior has been typical of OD for years, so it could well keep going for even more years. I think it’s going to end up dying the death of abandonment more than just vanishing. It’s so irritating to keep experiencing the loooooong waits and time-outs every time you try to read or note or write that I’m afraid even the most loyal ODers will eventually jump ship. I’m still considering myself a dual citizen but Prosebox is looking better all the time. It’s very sad.

But you know what isn’t sad? Greenwich, that’s what!

I have a ton of Greenwich pictures and ran out of time and patience last entry, so here ya go:

The outside of the Market. It was very crowded and kind of dark inside so oddly enough I didn’t take any pictures inside.

I DO love Greenwich Market! Here are the cool earrings I bought:

They are made by Sally Lee’s of London, and Sally Lee was manning the booth and told me all about how she made them. Oddly she seems to specialize in cufflinks, though, judging by the website. I loooove them. I’m wearing them as I type.

Oh, and here’s the little cat pin that I bought just because it was cute, tiny and cheap:

Well, this is ALMOST inside:

After the market and a beer (minus Eel Pie), we walked up to the observatory. You walk through a very pretty tree-filled park and up a hill. I was so impressed with how many parks and green spaces London has.

The view is stunning as you walk up the hill, and even better from the top.

That’s the O2 Arena a little to the right of center, with the done roof.

And this weird thing is a tram that you can take from… Isle of Dogs, I think, to the O2 Arena. You can barely see it to the right of the arena in the picture above. Our London Pass gave us free travel on the tram and we were going to ride it.. but, no time! Also Kim is a little afraid of heights and I really think it would have freaked her totally out. I think it might have freaked me out and I am fine with heights:

You can see the bizarre swirly smashed-roller-coaster thing that’s at the Olympic Park in Stratford from here-

The Royal Observatory looked really neat — we didn’t go in because we thought there was a fee. Well, there IS for parts of it apparently but not all of it. Oh, well. Next time! At least we made it up there, which is more than we did on the last trip.

The 24 Hour Clock. Oddly enough we managed to completely miss the Meridian Line, which is the Prime Meridian of the World, at Latitude 0. I think it was on the other side of the building. That’s the problem with packing so much in — you overlook the obvious things you should see. And neither of us is remotely organized. It’s amazing we saw as much as we did, really.

After that, we went back down to Greenwich to walk around a little more before we had to catch the ferry back.

This was a very old church, that for some reason I didn’t get a picture of other than from this weird angle:

With really creepy statues on the pillars.

At last we set off on the ferry again, back to our home base.

We decided to get off at Tower of London instead of going all the way to Waterloo, and find some dinner. We ended up at a really nice little place on the South Bank, right on the Thames, called Brown’s Bar and Brasserie. Wow, I see that they are a chain and there are a gazillion of them. We were at the Butler’s Wharf one, and sat inside (rainy) but had a fine view of the Thames.

I had the priciest fish and chips of the whole trip, but they were very good. And Guinness!

Then, sadly, we headed back to Stratford for the last time. Stopping of course at Wetherspoons, and also walking around Westfield, the glitzy new mall they built for the Olympics. We’d passed it a couple of times a day but didn’t go in. It’s huge and fancy and everything was closed unfortunately because it was late in the day. You can see the Olympic Park but can’t see inside — although apparently you can from an upper floor of Marks and Spencer… but they were closed. Oh, well.

And so….. goodbye London! Next up, we set off for Pewsey – on the train!