Day 2 Baltic Jewels & the Midnight Sun: London (Greenwich), England

 June 26, 2022 ~ Greenwich

Good Day, from Royal Greenwich!  Greenwich is a borough of London that was designated as the Royal Borough of London after the 2012 Olympics as a reward to the citizens of the borough for putting up with losing access to their park for six months (3 months before and 3 months following) because of several of the competitions being held within their park.

 We slept late and enjoyed breakfast in the World Cafe (a sort of buffet-style restaurant) before setting off on our Walking Tour of Royal Greenwich.  Our ship is docked in the middle of the Thames, so we have to take a "tender" to get to the shore.

Our guide, Pino, is an Italian transplant to London, and he was just a superb guide.  He set a steady pace that was not too fast nor too slow, and, although I was worried that I wouldn't be able to keep up, I did so without much trouble.  Pino met us as we got off our tender, which took us from the Mars over to the pier.  We gathered in our small group and set off. 

Our first stop was in front of the sailing ship, Cutty Sark.  According to Wikipedia, Cutty Sark is a British clipper ship. She was built on the River Leven, Dumbarton, Scotland in 1869 for the Jock Willis Shipping Line.  She was one of the last tea clippers to be built and one of the fastest, coming at the end of a long period of design development for this type of vessel, which halted as steamships took over.

The photo above is from a collection in the State Library of Victoria and shows Cutty Sark photographed at sea by Captain Woodget using a camera balanced on two of the ship's boats lashed together.

And here she is today as a tourist attraction.

Cutty Sark spent only a few years on the tea trade before turning to the trade in wool from Australia.  As steam technology continued to improve, sailing ships declined.  In 1895 Cutty Sark was sold to a Portuguese company, Ferreira and Co.  She was renamed Ferreira, and continued as a cargo ship until 1922 when she was purchased by a retired sea captain who used her as a training ship.  After his death Cutty Sark was transferred to the Thames Nautical Training College, where she became an auxiliary cadet training ship.  By 1954, she had ceased to be useful as a cadet ship and was transferred to permanent dry dock here in Greenwich for public display.

Cutty Sark is one of only three remaining original composite construction (wooden hull on an iron frame) clipper ships from the nineteenth century in part or whole, the others being the City of Adelaide, which arrived in Port Adelaide, South Australia on 3 February 2014 for preservation, and the beached skeleton of Ambassador of 1869 near Punta Arenas, Chile.

She is quite lovely, and is currently a tourist attraction.  You can visit a museum, tour the ship, and even do some adventure climbing on her masts.  I actually watched a few people up there this morning.

Definitely NOT for the faint of heart, but I imagine the views of the Thames are extraordinary!

From there we moved on to the visitors' center which is housed in a building that was part of the Royal Naval College here in Greenwich.  The Old Royal Naval College is considered "the architectural centerpiece" of Maritime Greenwich, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. UNESCO stands for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.  They describe this site as being of "outstanding universal value" and reckoned to be the "finest and most dramatically sited architectural and landscape ensemble in the British Isles". The buildings, designed by Christopher Wren, and built between 1696 and 1712. were originally constructed to serve as the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich. The hospital closed in 1869. Between 1873 and 1998 it was the Royal Naval College, Greenwich.

As you can see from the photo, it was a sparkling day, sunny with many light, fluffy clouds floating in an azure blue sky.

We strolled on through Royal Greenwich Park over to the Queen's House.  Queen's House was built between 1616 and 1635.  Our guide told us that Anne of Denmark, the Queen and wife of James I of England (son of Mary, Queen of Scots), refused to speak to her husband for more than three months as a result of a spat over one of James' concubines.  James then ordered the house to be built, commissioning the architect Inigo Jones to design it.  Queen's House is one of the most important buildings in British architectural history, being the first consciously classical building to have been constructed in the country. It was Jones's first major commission after returning from his 1613–1615 grand tour of Roman, Renaissance, and Palladian architecture in Italy.

 

This is my favorite picture -- admittedly, I cropped out some people, but I love the symmetry it shows.

You can go inside the Queen's House, and the most beautiful part is the "painted hall."

Although we did not go into the Queen's house, a fellow traveler did, and he captured the above photo to show the beautiful paintings that are displayed throughout the house.  

We continued on with Pino explaining how important the Park is to the residents of Greenwich.  The park is a beautiful green space for residents to enjoy.  He recounted the tale of how grumpy the residents were when, in 2012, London hosted the Olympics, and "their" park became the site of the equestrian events.  They were unable to use the park for three months before the Olympics and three months after.  As a reward, the Queen named Greenwich a "Royal Borough."

This is a view of London from Greenwich Park.

From the Queen's House we could see the Royal Observatory up on the hill.  We did not scale the hill on the tour, but Jeff went back up later in the day while I relaxed and worked on yesterday's post.  The Royal Observatory, Greenwich is an observatory situated on a hill in Greenwich Park in south east London, overlooking the River Thames to the north. It played a major role in the history of astronomy and navigation, and became important to the study of astronomy and navigation.  Because the Prime Meridian passes through it, it gave its name to Greenwich Mean Time, the precursor to today's Coordinated Universal Time. 

According to Wikipedia, the observatory was commissioned in 1675 by King Charles II, with the foundation stone being laid on 10 August. The old hilltop site of Greenwich Castle was chosen by Sir Christopher Wren, a former Savilian Professor of Astronomy; as Greenwich Park was a royal estate, no new land needed to be bought. At that time the king also created the position of Astronomer Royal, to serve as the director of the observatory and to "apply himself with the most exact care and diligence to the rectifying of the tables of the motions of the heavens, and the places of the fixed stars, so as to find out the so much desired longitude of places for the perfecting of the art of navigation." He appointed John Flamsteed as the first Astronomer Royal. The building was completed in the summer of 1676.  The building was often called "Flamsteed House", in reference to its first occupant.

The scientific work of the observatory was relocated elsewhere in stages in the first half of the 20th century, and the Greenwich site is now maintained almost exclusively as a museum.

                          

                        The orange line is the Prime Meridian.

The time ball is the red ball on a post – when it drops a certain time is signaled. This allowed clocks to be set from afar with great accuracy, particularly the chronometers of ships on the River Thames below, prior to sailing. The observatory would first determine the time by stellar observations.

We did not walk up to the observatory since it was a very long climb uphill, but Jeff went back out later in the day.  But more about that later.

From the Queen's House, we meandered toward the Market, passing the Maritime Museum and making a much needed rest stop as Pino explained how museums are funded in England (much of that went over my tired head).  

I was immediately enamored by a little boy and his sister who delighted in running up a trough of a fountain, stepping out and then screaming joyfully as they ran back to the bottom and started up all over again.

I could have watched these two cherubs all afternoon long, but soon it was time to move on to hear the story of King William IV, whose statue is pictured below.

William IV was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and King of Hanover (Germany) from June 26, 1830 until his death in 1837. He was the third son of George III (of American Revolutionary War infamy), succeeding his elder brother George IV, becoming the last king and penultimate monarch of Britain's House of Hanover.  He inherited the throne when he was 64 years old. Although William did not engage in politics as much as his brother or his father, he was the last British monarch to appoint a prime minister contrary to the will of Parliament. He granted his German kingdom a short-lived liberal constitution.

At the time of his death, William had no surviving legitimate children, but he was survived by eight of the ten illegitimate children he had by the actress Dorothea Jordan, with whom he cohabited for twenty years. Late in life, he married and apparently remained faithful to Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen. William was succeeded by his niece Victoria.

We continued our meander into town and made a brief visit to St. Alfege's Church, a lovely little Anglican church on the corner of the marketplace.  

St. Alfege's Anglican Church, Greenwich London

The baroque style church has its roots in the medieval period and was rebuilt in 1712–1714 to the designs of Nicholas Hawksmoor.  I loved its simplicity and the beauty of its organ.

Here at the corner, our guide, Pino, left us to our own devices.  Many in our group chose to stay in town for lunch and then do some shopping.  Jeff and I chose to return to the ship for lunch and a short nap before Jeff went off on his own to explore.

He walked up to the observatory to view the Prime Meridian, and he was fascinated by the tunnel that took him under the River Thames.  There were 80 steps down into the tunnel (and 80 steps up on the other side.  

The Greenwich Foot Tunnel crosses beneath the River Thames in East London, linking Greenwich (Royal Borough of Greenwich) on the south bank with Millwall (London Borough of Tower Hamlets) on the north. Approximately 4,000 people use the tunnel each day. It opened in 1902.

All in all, it was a lovely day, topped off by a lovely dinner in The Restaurant.  After dinner we enjoyed another look at the sunset, before heading off to listen to some music and a good night's sleep.

Goodnight, Greenwich Day 2