As you might suspect, my energy level is winding down, but then again, so is my time in London. I really wish I had a couple more days because I have not done or seen everything I wanted to do and see. Luckily, I have two days and three nights back here at the end of my trip, and my plans for those days is to walk around the area where Samuel Pepys lived and wrote about in his diary. There are also a couple of small museums I want to see, plus I want to spend a little time looking through the big, famous department stores.
This is about the fourth time I have been in London, and have never been able to go to Greenwich, so this time, I scheduled a night in a hotel there. But how to get there with my two overly heavy suitcases???
Too many steps for the subway, and a taxi is much too expensive for that distance. Then, I discovered the new Uber Ferry Boats that go up and down the Thames. These are not very expensive, there are no stairs, and since today was expected to be sunny and pleasant, it seemed a perfect solution!
And, actually it was. I checked out of my hotel and took a cab to the Westminster Pier, which is really not that far from my hotel. The boats run every few minutes, so in ten minutes, I was on the boat!! Found a pleasant place to stand or sit in the back of the boat and took some photos, below:
Recognize the Millennium Bridge from the Harry Potter movies? In the second-to-last movie, the Death Eaters made the bridge move and then destroyed it while it was full of pedestrians.
And here we pass another Uber ferry. By the way, there is no description of sights along the way because this is not really a tour boat. Also, I had expected to be able to get something to drink on the boat, but the tiny cafe was closed in the morning.
I am not doing a very good job drinking enough fluids on this trip, so I have to improve that. Part of the problem is that I like drinks really cold and preferably with ice, and that is just hard to get sometimes.
Nice view of Tower Bridge and the London skyline.
Arrived at the Greenwich Pier in about 15 minutes, so this was faster than a taxi would have been for that distance. Much more scenic, as well!
Below is the ship Cutty Sark. At one time, it was the fastest trading ship in the world. It was built at the very last times of sailing ships, and it could have been built with a steam engine, but wind is cheaper than oil, as we were told. Mostly, it carried tea and spices to England and wool and other good back to the Far East.
I dumped my bags at the hotel, and headed to a very pleasant place to get a good breakfast. Besides not drinking enough fluids, I also am not eating well, so I had a terrific breakfast of eggs Benedict.
Greenwich is famous as the home of the British Navy and also the location of the Prime Meridian. This means that all time on this planet is referenced back to this spot. For example, the Eastern Time Zone in the U.S. is +5, or five hours. Here is more information, i f you are interested: What is the Prime Meridian - and why is it in Greenwich?
I was a little disappointed with this National Maritime Museum, so it was only worth an hour. I had to skip the walk to the Observatory because it was up a steep hill, and I was just too worn out.
Just some things inside the museum I found interesting.
I had to take a photo of this because I had no idea what a pelican crossing was. Looked it up tonight and found that there are five types of pedestrian crossings and they are mostly named after birds: Different Types of Pedestrian Crossings (Do check this article out so you learn about zebra crossings and puffin crossings and will see what you have been missing!)
After the museum, I headed back to the Cutty Sark for a tour.
Now, if you have a few pounds to spare and are really adventurous, you can pay to get suited up and climb the rigging of this ship. No problems with me bypassing this!
Frankly, ya gotta be nuts, or at least very young to sign up for this!
Now, this might look like an observatory, but it isn't.
Can you read the fine print here??
This passenger tunnel across the Thames is still in use, and there were quite a few people who had walked all the way under the river. I should have poked my head in, but was just too tired.
Walked 1/2 mile back to the hotel and had planned to have a relaxing dinner in their cafe, except I was told there was no meal being served because the chef was out sick. This really irritated me because this was known when I checked in, but no one bothered to post anything in the lobby or notify me. This was a bigger problem because I was not willing to walk back half a mile to where restaurants were located, so I ended up going to a local grocery store and picking up a prepared fruit salad, chunk of cheese, small package of ham, and a Coke. Got ice from the bartender and ate in my room!!
Two other irritants today were that my Outlook was not working properly on my laptop so I could not do my batch trick of selecting and saving photos in a smaller format for my blog. It was taking forever to load full-sized images, so I gave up.
I did record my steps and distance for today: 12,210 steps and 4.79 miles!!! Does that help explain why this old lady has been so exhausted??? One thing that added to this mileage today was that I walk half a mile to the town area to get breakfast, and then while I was eating, I remembered that I had forgotten to take my morning meds, and so I had to walk back, get my pills, take them, and then walk back to the museum and Cutty Sark. My fault, but it really wore me out.
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