Where Time Begins

(One last entry to finish off our England trip...)

We spent most of our second day trip in London in Greenwich, Home of Time. Greenwich is on the Tube line from London, and when you first get off the train, it looks like an ugly little suburb. But as you go into town, it gets nicer and nicer.

The Prime Meridian, 0 degrees longitude, divides the world into the eastern and western hemispheres. It's at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, and like all the other tourists, we entertained ourselves by jumping back and forth over the line. ("Now I'm east! Now I'm west! Now I'm both!") They also have a little orange ball on the top of the Observatory that drops every day at 1 PM -- kind of like a little mini Times Square, except they don't have to wait for New Years.

The Observatory is located up on a hill, overlooking the Maritime Museum, the Naval College, and part of London. They've got a little museum that includes some of the original clocks built to help with ship navigation. They also have the Octagon room, where the early astromers (including Halley of Halley's Comet) did their work.
Greenwich is also home to the Cutty Sark, a former tea ship and one of the fastest in its time. We took a slower boat down the Thames. (The weather cleared just in time for our boat ride, so we had fantastic views of the London Eye and Big Ben. We spent the rest of the evening in Covent Garden, an area with shops, restaurants, and street performers.)

All in all, a lovely trip!