July 12 (Sunday) – Thames River Boat ride and Greenwich

This morning we took the Tube to the Westminster station and bought tickets for the water bus to Greenwich.

The cruise along the Thames allowed us to see a lot of the London Skyline.  We saw many of the iconic buildings like the Tower of London...

St. Paul's Cathedral...

and the Tower Bridge.

We could also see the new Globe Theater, the reproduction of the theater where many of Shakespeare's plays were originally performed.

The Globe Theater

London also has a number of very interesting modern buildings that make for an interesting skyline.  The conical shaped building is St. Mary Axe.  Nicknamed The Gherkin.

One of the more interesting ones is called The Shard, because it looks like a glass shard stuck on end into the bank of the Thames.

The Shard and the Tower Bridge

A more notorious building is the 20 Fenchurch Street building, also known as the "Walkie Talkie" because of it's shape.  It turns out that the shape acts like a concave mirror that focuses the suns rays on objects below such that it has been known to melt car parts...  giving rise to the other nicknames "Walkie-Scorchie" or "Fryscraper".  Regardless, it has a very distinctive shape.

And a lot of buildings right along the river looked like they might be apartments or condominiums.

Upon arrival in Greenwich we saw the clipper ship, Cutty Sark, but decided not to tour it. 

Cutty Sark and the Streets of Greenwich

We took a quick walk through the naval museum.

Figureheads from sailing ships.

Adjacent to the Naval Museum was the Queen's House, a former Royal Residence for Queen Anne, wife of James I.  It is now used mainly as an art museum.

Queen's House (Center) from the Royal Observatory

Looking up the spiral staircase in the Queen's House

The grounds and buildings of the Naval College were very interesting.

We viewed the Royal Naval Academy Chapel, also known as the Painted Hall or the Sistine Chapel of the UK.  It was really beautiful with many painted ceilings and walls.

We had lunch at the Trafalgar Tavern right on the banks of the Thames.  This tavern was built circa 1837 and was featured in Charles Dicken’s Our Mutual Friends.  Next was a hike up the hill to the Royal Observatory...

where we stood in line to get our pictures taken beside/over the Prime Meridian.  The Prime Meridian is 0° longitude and is basically on the longitudinal line that separates the East and West Hemispheres.

We then toured some of the observatory museum exhibits that discussed time and measuring longitude.  Very interesting.   Until the longitude could be measured on a ship, many wrecks occurred because the ships couldn't tell their exact positions when at sea.  It was enough of a problem that a "longitude prize" was offered for a solution to the problem.  It took almost 50 years for scientists to create a solution, which resulted in the marine chronometer.  The museum documented these efforts.

At the end of the day we took the water taxi back to Westminster.  And of course Big Ben.

It was a pretty cold day so we cut the sightseeing a bit short and headed back to the hotel.