OK, I’ll just list what I did, and if I have the energy at the end of the list you might get a bit of a spiel.
London aquarium, Salvador Dali gallery, Tate Modern art gallery, Britain at War museum, Greenwich - including the Royal Observatory and finally a Jack the Ripper walking tour through the streets of London’s East End. After all that I am completely stuffed, though I did manage to fit in a couple of beers at a couple of pubs during the day. Tip for new players, “cask” beer is not served chilled, its still cooler than room temperature, but it ain’t cold. I won’t be doing that again.
Right, on to today. London aquarium, bit disappointing really, the Melbourne or Sydney ones are much better. I haven’t been to the Canberra one, but I think it would be better too. Sorry if you’re a fan of the London aquarium but it just didn’t cut it. The only saving grace it had was the large pool where kids could pat a sting ray, but that was about it.
Salvador Dali gallery. Well, this guy produced an impressive quantity of art, I’m sure most of you have probably seen his melting clocks at some stage or another. The interesting thing about him is that he wasn’t limited to just drawing, he also spent a considerable amount of time turning his drawings into three dimensional statues. The gallery was very interesting with a large cross section of his work.
After the Dali gallery it was on to the Tate Modern gallery and a stroll around a couple of their collections. I was fortunate enough to be there at the same time as a couple of school classes. I’m not sure if it was the noisy kids, or just me, but I’m still not sure why some things are classified as art.
After the Tate it was on to the Britain at War experience. Here you are taken back to the 1940’s and into a recreation of what an air raid shelter would have been like. Plenty of memorabilia from the period including a wedding dress made entirely from parachute silk. This museum wasn’t too bad but found the Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill museum yesterday more interesting.
After leaving the Britain at War experience I walked over the London Bridge - this version has been in place since about 1973 as the previous one was sold to an American (see the Wikipedia link). Just over the London Bridge is another Christopher Wren construction, the Monument to the Great Fire of London. The Monument is 61 meters high, which is exactly the distance from where it stands to where the fire started.
A quick look at the Monument and then onto the Docklands Light Rail and off to Greenwich. After a bit of stuffing around, swapping trains and the like I finally made it to Greenwich, the home of Time. After climbing up the hill and admiring the view of the Royal Naval College I made it to the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, which is where all time on earth is measured from, and also where all longitudes start. Greenwich being the location which the Prime Meridian is located. Strangely enough parts of the observatory and other buildings (called Flamsteed house) were also designed by Christopher Wren.
The observatory and displays were all very interesting, particularly the different clocks that were constructed throughout the 1700’s in an attempt to keep accurate time at sea. The problem being that the pendulum clocks of the time weren’t accurate enough at sea as they were affected by the ships motion too much. In the end a carpenter, who was a self taught watch maker, John Harrison, who eventually made a clock that was not vulnerable to the influences of external movement, temperature or humidity fluctuations. As a result sailors were able to calculate their position more accurately than before. In a test of one of his early time pieces on a Royal Navy ship they managed to avoid catastrophe entirely because of the accuracy of the clock.
After Greenwich it was back over the Thames and into the East End of London for a walking tour around the areas of the Jack the Ripper murders. The walking tour took us to the present day locations of a couple of the murders, as well as pointing out some of the buildings in the area that were present in 1888. Our guide was extremely knowledgable regarding Jack the Ripper and what life was like back in the 1880’s. There was no attempt by her to tell us who Jack the Ripper was, rather she just presented the facts as they are known in a reasonably unbiased manner. All in all it was a very interesting tour through the back streets and alley ways of the East End.
And that was day 3. Day 4 will be a little less busy as I have to leave the hostel I’m currently in and head to another one.
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