Day 3 / River Tour and Greenwich

Day 3 - 5/24/2012

Woke up early again but a few too many pints from the night before prevented me from going on a run this time.  We had a boat tour scheduled for today but none of us really knew what exactly it was.  The RAs met us downstairs at 10am and led us to a tube station where we took the tube to Westminster.  As a side note it feels awesome to be back in a city with decent public transit.  When we emerged from the tube station here's what we found. 



We then proceeded to get on a river boat where one of our professors who is also apparently a certified London tour guide narrated our slow cruise down the river.  The professor was really witty and knew his stuff.  He'd be talking about the 16th century Gothic architecture one minute before haggling the police river boats speeding by on the loud speaker as "show offs."  It was also kinda cool that our pilot is going to be on the Queen's barge for the diamond jubilee which is occurring in about a week.  1000 ships are going to escort her down the river in celebration for her 60th year on the throne.  I still don't see how that many ships are going to physically fit in that river but I guess I will see it.  One of the most striking things I saw on the trip down the river is big a difference there is between high tide and low tide.  We were going down river during low tide and based on the markings it seems high tide is at least 20 ft higher which is a huge difference.  The professor told us that the tide was one of the reasons the Romans settled here as the difference is so great that during transition from low tide to high tide and vice-versa it is so strong that it actually changes the direction of the river allowing ships that time tides properly to ride a swift river both up and down stream.  I'll post the other pictures I took on the trip with captions.

Don't Remember (Good Start)

Westminster Palace

Again

Again

No clue

Queen's Entertainment Center

Again

London Bridge

The Globe Theatre

Again

Again

Forget the name its not done yet but will be Europe's Tallest Building

Tower Bridge and HMS somethingoranother.  It was the British Flagship on DDay.  Churchill famously informed everyone he planned to go observe the invasion on the ship standing next to the guns as they blasted the French coast.  Eisenhower who would be responsible for his safety was dismayed and called the King to try and get him to reason with Churchill.  The King then phoned the Prime Minister and informed him that as Commander and Chief of the British Armed forces he intended to put on his uniform and observe the landings from the HMS Belfast.  Churchill was dismayed and eventually backed down.

Tower of London

Tower Bridge

Again

Again

Naval College

Again

The riverboat tour ended at the Naval College in Greenwich.  From there we were dropped off and informed that we would have to make our own way back to our dorms without any assistance.  After being somewhat stunned we realized it would be kinda cool to figure it out which I'm sure was our directors intention.  As a side note the director of student affairs here is a guy named Michael whose been emailing us for months.  I was picturing an old white British guy who was quite dull and instead was introduced yesterday to Michael the Don Cheadle look-a-like, seriously its scary how much he looks like him, who is absolutely hysterical.

We were all starving so we stopped at a pub for lunch.  Afterwards we decided to go and try to find the Prime Meridian, or the line that divides the eastern and western hemispheres that is located in Greenwich.  Regrettably we found out it was about a 20 minute walk straight uphill.  The combination of the jeans I was wearing (stupidly to avoid looking as American in what is probably one of the most touristy areas in London) and the two pints I'd had with lunch had me sweating and exhausted when we reached it.  However we paid our 5 pounds to get into the Royal Observatory and I snapped a few pictures.

View from the Observatory.  The construction below is for the equestrian event in the Olympics that is taking place there

Better Angle

Olympic Countdown

One foot in East one foot in West.

 Someone snapped a few pics of us standing there and I'll post them when I get them but they're on someone elses camera.

We managed to make our way home from here and I laid down for a much deserved nap.  After napping myself and a few friends decided to go to the welcome party that the staff had organized at a bar down by Westminster.  The bar was pretty cool, it was right along the river and I liked the atmosphere.  We stayed til around midnight when we decided to head to another bar that some other people were heading to.  After a brief cab ride where our driver was a Chicago Bears fan of all things we arrived and found quite the party.  The best way for me to describe the "bar" is I try to think of those old pictures of the beetles in Liverpool where its a basement with concrete walls and just lots of music and such going on.  The night was an absolute blast once we got there and it was hard to get away when we did but we had to be up at 9 the next morning.  I'll censor the exact time we left from this as to not horrify certain relatives but needless to say it was quite the first real night out.  What a full day and hopefully you enjoyed this and if you did I'll try to keep it updated.

Best from London,
Mick