London to Greenwich: Tuesday 2 August

The awful noise seemed to stop at midnight, and started again at 7am this morning. As I wrote this blog post (8pm) it was going full tilt.

Nevertheless, today was a better day than yesterday - starting with a good lie-in this morning, with breakfast in bed courtesy of David (fruit, yoghurt, my GF cereal, and a coffee). In fact, the lie-in was a bit too long and we didn't get out the door until 10am, plans being delayed as we tried to work out the best way to spend our time, given the ever-changing weather forecast! It seemed to indicate just overcast weather, so we set off via the underground for Westminster and the pier where our London Passes gave us free rides with City Cruises for 24 hours.

No sooner had we come out of the underground at Westminster than the rain started. We carried on, with jackets and 'Blunt' umbrella and got on the 10:40am boat to Greenwich. We sat on the top deck, to get photos, but soon the rain forced everyone inside for the last hour of the 1.5 hour trip. It was an interesting commentary, and it was good to see further along the Thames River and know more of the history of this amazing river.

  

  

  

We docked in Greenwich at 12pm and decided to have lunch first, so ducked into an Italian chain restaurant called 'Zizzi'. I had a very mediocre GF Pizza Margarita, and David enjoyed lasagne. Then we attempted to follow Rick Steve's tour of Greenwich, in between rain showers. We first went in to the Cutty Sark (normally huge queues, but none in this weather). It was well-known as the fastest clipper (sailing ship) back in the 1800s, carrying cargoes of tea and wool. There were some parts of the ship I didn't look at because they were tricky to get to with narrow steps, slippery from the rain. The ship had been badly damaged by fire in 2006, just after renovations had began. They've put a huge effort into preserving it but I felt the Edwin Fox displays in Picton were more interesting. We spent around 45 minutes there.

  

Next we wandered through the Discover Greenwich Information Centre, into the Old Royal Naval College buildings of the Chapel of St Peter and Paul (another place badly damaged by fire just after the original building had been completed), and the Painted Hall (originally intended as a dining hall for 'pensioners', but with glorious religious paintings).

  

  

Time was running shorter than expected and the weather wasn't great so we bypassed the Queen's House and headed up the steep path to the Royal Observatory Greenwich, where I was determined to see the prime meridian 0 degrees longitude. I made it up the path (phew!) only to find huge crowds up the top (along with amazing views, even in the bleak weather). Our Passes allowed us to enter for free, and we did go in. But we were beyond enjoying it - it was too busy, and we had another case of the audioguide being hard to see and hear. We were both tired and running out of time, so we had a quick look at the meridian line and marvelled at what it represented, then took the steep walk back down the hill. 

  

  

We ducked through the ground floor of the National Maritime Museum (fascinating, and worth a return visit) and picked up a free copy (with London Pass) of a very interesting book about the museum and what it represents and its displays about all aspects of maritime life.

  

We had half an hour to wait for the 4pm boat back to Westminster Pier, so went back into 'Zizzi' for a seat, David having a beer and me a coffee. The return trip was only about an hour and a quarter, and was very relaxing, sitting comfortably inside and enjoying the views while the rain continued to come and go. Then we had a quick trip back on the underground to Victoria, and headed straight to our 6pm booking at 'Jamie's Italian Victoria' (Jamie Oliver).

We were early, after all that rushing! But we had really excellent service from our waitress, Gabriella, and a lovely relaxing dinner. I enjoyed a cocktail called 'Amalfi Collins': St Germain elderflower liqueur, limoncello, Bombay Sapphire gin and lemon juice with a dash of soda. David enjoyed his main, Gennaro's Chicken Primavera, and I had the best pasta of my life - just a pasta carbonara with GF penne ('smoky pancetta, sweet buttery leeks, lemon and a traditional carbonara sauce') - divine! I had a panna cotta for dessert and David enjoyed his first tiramisu. Apparently a GF tiramisu was no longer on the menu. A very pleasant ending to the day - my health app tells me I took 12,727 steps today!