day 3 in london: greenwich

The first lesson for today was the proper way to say Greenwich. If you say it how it looks Green Wich, you will look like an dumb tourist. The correct pronunciation in gren itch. The English just seem to slur their syllables together and/or have a lot of silent letters.

The first thing we did was head over to the Painted Hall and the Chapel. These two rooms are the only public rooms in the old navel college. The ceiling was an ornate scene will a bunch of symbolism. I bought a phamplet that explained it all so I'll have to dig that out to remember who each character was. This was the dining hall for the men who lived there. Can you imagine eating everyday is such a magnificent building?

this is the first photo I have of myself from the trip.

Inside the chapel they had a pianist who was constantly playing. It wasn't as cool as the Painted hall but it was still beautiful.

It was about a 20 minute tube ride out to Greenwich. I had no idea what was out there because I didn't do a very good job before hand researching it because wasn't one of the things I was super excited about. It turned out to be a pretty fun little side trip. Not something that I would probably go back and see next time I come to London, but fun all the same. It's claim to fame is the Royal Observatory and the Prime Meridian. We made the climb up to the observatory but didn't pay the fee to go stand by the monument that marks 0.0.

The Queen's House was lovely. It was sort of a last minute should we or shouldn't we since we still wanted to get a bite of lunch before catching the train back. We ended up going and I'm glad I did. It now acts as an art gallery. The tulip staircase was lovely and had this hanging art piece that was all string. There was a sign that said they had a Turner painting and so the fan girl that I walked through every room looking for that one painting and ignoring most of them. We came across this painting that the sign seemed to be saying was the painting but it didn't look right. Not in a very important spot, nothing really special making it stick out, and no name plate that said Turner. The sign pointing to the painting was really pointing down the stairs. Silly us. When we finally found it I was so excited. It was a piece that I hadn't seen before, one of his earlier painting.

After the Queens House we went back to the market and found food. I got tomato soup. It was alright, my mothers is better. We met up with the group and headed back to London.

Cheers.