Day 21 - Back in London

May 22, 2008

I woke up just before 8:00am and started getting ready for our last full day in London. Jeremiah got up shortly after. We went downstairs and Mike and Gillian were both still around and haven't left for work yet which was nice to be able to see them again.

Mike helped us figure out part of our route on the Underground and DLR as we had never travelled on the DLR before and weren't sure if our Oyster cards would work on them or not. But he assured us they would.

We ate some cereal and finished getting ready. We said goodbye to Charlotte as she was heading back to school that day and it would be the last time we would see her. Then we were out the door to our favorite bus stop right around the corner just to find out that that bus stop is temporarily out of order. At least it wasn't out of order when we were using it everyday at the beginning of our trip! We quickly walked up the street to Walthamstow Station to the next stop and waited a few minutes for the bus to arrive: 275 to Barkingside (the voice on the train says this in a nice English accent every time someone gets on or off the bus just so you know exactly which bus you are on. We got so used to hearing it at the beginning of our trip and the female voice says it in such a unique way that, during the other parts of our trip outside of London we would just randomly say it to each other. It was fun and full of good memories. The return bus is "275 to St. James Street.")

We got on and headed to the top level and sat in the front seats. We figured this would be one of our last times to be able to do that on the trip so we needed to make the most of it. I think some of the trees have grown since the last time on the bus because the roof of the bus sure did hit a lot of tree branches along the way (whack!). It wasn't until then that I noticed that all the trees along the road had weird shaped to them because they are trimmed away over the road area to allow for the double-decker buses to get through.

We got off at Woodford Station and stopped at a little store to pick up a small bottle of water for the day. Then we went on the underground (Central Line) to Stratford Station. There we changed to the DLR (Docklands Light Railway). We were a little confused on exactly where to go so I asked for some help from one of the assistants; he was very nice. We walked to the right area after going down some stairs, then across the way, and up some different stairs. We didn't see any trains coming on the sign for the platform he told us to take so we were a little confused as to which platform to be on.

Right before this, as we were walking up to the platform, Jeremiah saw a standalone sensor that you are supposed to swiped your Oyster card on (Notes: An Oyster card, if you didn't know or hadn't already figured it out, is a card that you can load up money on and then swipe each time you take the Underground or a bus; it then deducts that fare from the money on the card. This makes travelling very fast. Plus, it's supposed to give you a better rate of fare on the Underground so you aren't charged as much. Normally, when you enter a station, you swiped the card on the way in to get through the turn-stile and then you swipe it on your way out to get through the Exit turn-stile. It then knows exactly how far you travelled and deducts the right amount. For the DLR, there were no turn-stiles to go through or exit; just these stand-alones that are really easy to miss if you aren't looking for them.)

Jeremiah thought we needed to swipe our cards as that's what it said to do, so we did. But then it didn't quite make sense to me that we would swipe it once upon entry to the Underground, once upon entry to the DLR, and then once upon exit from the DLR - an uneven amount when everything else so far had been an even amount of swipes. So I asked an assistant and she explained that we should have swiped the cards upon exiting the Underground but since we hadn't, to just swipe one more time at the standalone and that it would work everything out. So we did and it deducted the right amounts.

We got on the next train that came because it didn't look like a train was coming to go as far as we needed to any time soon. The distance between the stops on these train came really fast so you really weren't on it very long. The train terminated at Canary Wharf, about 5 stops before we needed to get off. So all the passengers that needed to continue on further and no go back the way we had just come, got off and waited for 2 minutes for the next train for Levisham or Lewisham (can't quite remember the exact name right now). We got on that train and headed off again.

We arrived at our station, the one for the Maritime Museum in Greenwich (can't remember it's name at the moment either), and made our way up to the surface. We then followed a walkway towards where we thought the Museum would be. We then found some signs indicating that we were going in the right direction. It wasn't too far away from the station and, Mike was right, it was one of the largest buildings in the area so you really couldn't miss it.

We walked up to the front and took a few pictures. Then we walked over to the left to go behind the building and make our way up the steep hill a little ways off to the Royal Observatory. We noticed that there were a lot of school groups here with elementary age children and figured that this must be a great field trip for them as the museum is free and there is plenty of green grass all around to play on.

Before we had gotten anywhere near the hill to go up to the observatory, I heard this little girl say to her teacher and classmates that "I would rather be in school than have to walk up that hill!" It was pretty funny.

We then made our way down a path and to "the hill". It was rather steep and I was glad to be done with it by the time we reached the top. We went into the building there and made our way down some stairs as Jeremiah had read online that they had some shows on space from 11:00am to 4:00pm and we thought we would try to make it for the first showing.

When we got down there, there wasn't any show on nor did it look like there would be one any time soon. We sat down and watched the TV screen in front of us that had a slideshow on it showing what shows they were going to have throughout the day. The first one didn't actually start until 1:00pm. I found a flyer with all the shows and times on it and then we headed back up the stairs.

We watched a short looping video they had playing in one room about the stars and planets (it was interesting, but, honestly, I was more interested by the woman on the side of the screen that was signing the whole presentation for the deaf kids/adults in the audience; I've always been fascinated by sign language).

Then we moved on to another room and quickly walked through it. We walked out of this building as there wasn't much left to do (we skipped one room that was interactive as there were a ton of school kids in it playing around).

We walked outside and followed the signs for the Meridian Line. But first we made a slight detour to a little room where they had all different clocks on display that were used on ships up until the 1950s. They were pretty neat to look at.

Then we went around the corner and saw people hovering over the Meridian Line so we continued on to the next building which used to house one of the Royal Astronomers and his two assistants. They set up his old rooms as they would have looked and we walked through all of them. Then you entered this one room with a lot of clocks and time pieces in it and in here were on display Harrison's 4 clocks he made trying to win the £20,000 Longitude prize back in the early 1700s. We had no idea that his actual clocks would be here!

These clocks were made to solve the problem of ships at sea not being able to clearing know their Longitude and thus many ships crashed and many sailors died. So after much uproar from the people and from professionals, Parliament set out a competition with the above mentioned reward to solve the problem of Longitude while at sea. Harrison was the one to solve it but it took him 4 trys and many many years.

These clocks were pretty amazing as you looked at each of them and tried to see how they worked. It's hard for me to comprehend just how someone could think of all the little details to something like this. You weren't supposed to take pictures of anything in any of these museums and had "guards" walking around everywhere to make sure you didn't do anything you weren't supposed to. But I ended up getting a picture of each model before I was told that I couldn't do that. :)

After this museum, we went back outside and I got my picture on the Meridian Line. For £1 you could have your name written on a certificate (just a piece of paper) with the exact time to the one thousandth second stating that at that exact time you were straddling the Meridian Line. Funny thing is, that in order to put your coin in the machine you can't be straddling the line so you really weren't straddling it at the exact time stated on the certificate.

We then walked through the exit and took a few pictures of the Meridian Clock whose time never changes with daylight savings time (not sure if that is the exact name of the clock or if it is something different; I will have to ask Jeremiah).

We then headed back down the hill and to a little cafe outside the Maritime museum. We ate some lunch as I was starving and then headed back to the front of the museum to finally enter it.

The main reason we wanted to go here was because we thought it may be where there were naval uniforms on display which we had used as a basis for the 1800s Naval Uniform that I recently made for Jeremiah (if you didn't know I did this and that he wore it to a Jane Austen Evening back in January, you will have to wait for the blog post about it which I have yet to write; but it will come soon and then you can see pictures about the event).

I really wanted to see those uniforms close up to see if there were any tricks to making them that I couldn't see through the pictures online.

We walked inside and were about to go around the front counter when we were told we had to get a ticket at the counter. Not sure exactly why you needed a ticket that said "Free Admission" on it, but we followed their rules.

We then walked about and saw some really neat things. They had the whole back panel of a ship that they ended up destroying at some point and that was really neat. Jeremiah got my picture next to it. The name of the ship was Implacable, I believe.

We walked throughout the various rooms and enjoyed what they had on display. They had one exhibit devoted to Admiral Nelson and had some of his uniforms on display; they even had the last one he wore when he was shot and killed in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

We walked around a bit more but it wasn't quite what we were expecting. It was interesting and they had some really neat things on display, I was just hoping for some more uniforms. Oh well.

Around 3:00pm, we left and walked back to the station to head north and then transfer to the Jubilee line to head over to London Bridge. We thought it would be nice to look around Central London one last time before we had to leave.

I remembered seeing the "Wobbly Bridge" (a pedestrian foot path alongside a bridge that used to wobble a lot when it was first made) on our trip down the River Thames and I thought that might be fun to cross. We got out of the station and walked up to the surface and found our way to the river. The London Bridge wasn't too far away but I didn't see the Wobbly Bridge. We walked to the middle of the London Bridge and took some pictures. Then we decided what to do next. I wasn't in the mood for walking too much more and I thought it would be fun to walk across Tower Bridge which was to the east of us. Jeremiah thought that we were getting out at this station to try to find The Globe Theatre, which was somewhere to the west of us.

At first I decided to just go to Tower Bridge, which holds a similar fascination to me as Brooklyn Bridge, so we wouldn't be back-tracking in any of our walking. But as we started, I thought I might regret not doing as much as we could before we left for the day so I changed my mind and our walking direction and started off to where we thought the theatre was.

I did ask someone if they knew how far way it was and he said it wasn't too far and to just follow this certain path (but I couldn't quite understand what path he said). So we found the path that walked mainly along the River Thames. Since you can see the theatre from the river, we thought this was a good plan. Not too long later, we found signs to point us in the right direction.

We came across a pirate looking ship that actually had been around since Queen Elizabeth I's reign. They do living history events on it now and it is permanently docked at the harbor.

We continued walking and then came up to what we believed was the theatre but it was rather disappointing and not what I thought it would be: it was a brick rounded building. It didn't seem quite right so we walked a little further and then the real theatre came into sight. Now that was what I was expecting.

We took a few pictures and then found a place to sit. I bought my last 99 cone of the trip and we enjoyed it. After a little bit we headed back the way we had come as we needed to get moving to make it back in time for dinner with Mike and Gillian.

On the way back we stopped to read a sign that we had missed on the way in. I had noticed the interestesting wall with scaffolding surrounding it but hadn't really thought too much about it. When we read the sign associated with it, we learned that it was a wall to what used to be a great hall from hundreds of years ago and this is all that remains of it. Kings used to use this house with the hall; I can't quite remember what year it was though. So I took some pictures. The scaffolding was all around because it was right next to a more modern building from the 1960s which was going to be demolished soon and they are trying to stabilize the wall to avoid any damage to it during the demolition. It was a pretty neat find.

We then continued down, passed the way we had come, and walked to Tower Bridge, taking pictures along the way.

The bridge was fun to walk on and I was able to get some different shots of London Tower and Tower hill.

Once over the bridge, we walked the sidewalk around Tower hill to the nearest Tube station. We got to see some ruins of the Tower that we hadn't seen before on our previous trip so that was really neat.

We then made our way into the crowded tube station and got on a District Line train. After a few stops, we got off (at Mile End) and changed to a Central Line train. At Leytonstone stop (just 2 or 3 stops before our stop), we exited the train to wait for another one as there is a split in the tracks and we needed a train that would go on the other split.

We only had to wait a minute or two and then we got our train. We exited at Woodford Station and headed out to the street and to our bus stop. We only had to wait 3 minutes for the bus to arrive and then we boarded and headed up to the top level. Others had already taken the front seats so we sat one row behind. But as soon as one row in the front was clear, we headed up to it as this was definitely the last time we would be sitting up there.

We got off at our stop and headed up to the house. Mike and Gillian were already home and it was just about 7:00pm. We had reservations at the Indian restaurant at 7:30pm. We chatted with Mike a bit while Gillian fed her mother upstairs. Just before 7:30pm, we headed out the door to walk up the street to the restaurant.

I have never had Indian food before and Jeremiah hasn't had it too much, so we let Mike and Gillian pick out most of the dishes and luckily for us, they prefer chicken dishes over others. We had a special where it was an "all you can eat" so we order a bunch of different dishes to try.

I wasn't sure how they would taste but I wasn't sacred of them either. They ended up being really good. The flavors were really nice and everything went so well together. We finished off all the dishes we had ordered and were stuffed by the end. It was a very good first experience with Indian food. It was also a really nice time to spend with Mike and Gillian.

We walked back to the house and I got on the computer to check in for our flights. Jeremiah chatted with Mike and Gillian while I did this and they got the evening tea ready. After I had finished, I went in to the front room to join them.

Gillian had gotten out her Capernwray albums and sat down with us to show the pictures to us. It was really fun looking at those and hearing some of the stories. It was also really neat to see Peter, Debbie, Uncle Bill, and Gillian all so young. I'm not sure if I had ever seen pictures of them so young before. We really enjoyed this.

Then we shared our pictures from the trip with them so they could see where we had been. By the time we finished, it was 11:00pm and Mike had to get up early the next morning and we were tired as well. We were going to look at some of their pictures from their recent trip to China but Mike promised to put them up on a website to look at later (we're holding you to that Mike :) ).

We all then headed up to bed for the night. It was a really good last day in London.

Love,
S&J