March 10th. A day in Greenwich and a night at the theatre.

March 10th was wonderful... much like each day of our trip.

We started in Ealing Broadway, Mum and my Aunties old stomping ground.  We needed to do a little souvenir shopping, which ended up as a quite successful trip. FYI, Primark is the K-mart of England. Really cheap and a little bit of everything.

 

Andy is a pharmacist and this was one of the million Chemist's shoppes we passed... they are everywhere.

 

Melissa and Auntie Glyn, just a couple of locals.

 

On our way to Greenwich we stopped to see some of the Olympic grounds from the London Olympics.  They designed much of the park as removable and reusable so most of it is gone or is being repurposed (pretty smart).

 

 

This was a day of varied transit. From the Underground, to commuter trains to a boat (not this one).

This is the Cutty Sark, formerly the fastest way to get from England to Australia, now she is in dry dock at Greenwich.

Yeah, this is pretty much the jackpot of English tourism pictures.  A Royal Mail drop and Telephone booth within a few meters of each other, or maybe the Royal Mail isn't a big deal.  Melissa didn't even know they were special until I made her take this picture.

We had lunch at Trafalgar Tavern in Greenwich. A former gathering place for the smarties of the area.

Melissa had a huge portion of fish and chips with mushy peas.

I had Whitebait.  It is the specialty of the Tavern.  Baby herring floured and fried, and that is all.  Not gutted, cut or chopped.  Melissa had a few with me, before I pointed out their eyes and she remembered what these fish fingers really were. 

They actually aren't bad.  Very crunchy, low fishiness, and came with a spicy dip.

 

The grounds at the Greenwich observatory are gorgeous, so is this girl.  The observatory is at the top of the hill behind her... we are almost to the beginning of the earth (is that how the Prime Meridian works?)

Half way up the hill.  This is roughly where Melissa told me to hurry on ahead as the Observatory would be closing soon... and believe me, in Greenwich they are punctual.

By hurrying ahead I arrived in time to be invited to enter as "the last patron of the day."  I figured Melissa might be a little concerned getting to the top of the hill and not being able to find me.  There is plenty of interesting stuff around the outside so we wandered and found the standards of measurement (the clock matched the GPS time stamp the phone gave to  this picture)

Oh, the Prime Meridian is outside, also. Here's Melissa in the Western Hemisphere. As this was her first time outside the USA, she decided to stay in her own Hemisphere.

Andy in both halves of the world.

And the two of us on literally opposite sides of the earth, yet still close enough for a hug.

We decided to return to London via the Thames.  We took a high speed river cutter.  Melissa's knee was tired so she got out of the wind and rested while we waited for the cutter.

And here she comes, it was a pretty cool ride.

With some nice views.

 

We were hurrying back to London for our evening at the theatre.  We bought our tickets with a theatre dinner special.  We ate at a local pub called Porter's about 1/4 mile from the New London Theatre.  The food was great! Melissa had a Shepherd's Pie and I had beef faggots, both tasted great... it was a shame we'd eaten in Greenwich just a couple hours earlier.

This was the show... it was awesome!  The story is amazing, the puppets and puppeteers we very convincing and seeing a show in London was a fun addition we didn't plan on originally. 

Here's half a horse, hanging from the ceiling.

 

The end... of this day, kind of.   We got lost trying to find the Underground in Covent Garden (where My Fair Lady was filmed) and ended up wandering for 30 minutes, finding "the closed for the evening" station, and having to walk to the next station.