BES Assignment Eight - Greenwich

Today I went to Greenwich via boat, and explored part of Greenwich for a few hours. The boat ride was awesome! I had been wanted to take pictures of sites around the Thames because I forgot to bring my camera last time I was in that part and this boat ride gave me the opportunity to take some great pictures from the river. When we got to the Canary Wharf area, I was excited to get some pictures of the Canary Wharf building. I have really gotten into the Doctor Who series lately, and in the show, the Canary Wharf building is a front for Torchwood. It is nerdy, but I still wanted to see it. Stepping off the boat, I could tell that Greenwich was going to be a beautiful area.

My first stop was the observatory. I loved being on top of the hill it sits on and looking out over London. The spot where a person can straddle two hemispheres was cool to think about, but I was not in a hurry to get a picture there so I went into the observatory. I skimmed through the few various rooms that they had on display, but I did not really start looking at things till I got to the time section of the observatory. I really like watches and clocks; it is amazing how much detail and tiny parts go into making a clock tick.

The observatory had a lot of old nautical clock and the best part is the gears of the clocks were exposed. This gave me the chance to really observe how these clocks functioned. It is amazing how anyone figured out how to make such complicated pieces of equipment! Another tidbit that I learned was that people used to ‘sell time’. Basically people would charge a customer to set that persons clock to the correct time. This is a foreign concept to me because it is so simple to set watches to the correct time now, and I never really thought about how difficult that would have been when clocks first started appearing regularly.

My next stop was to the covered market. This was a unique market because it seemed to be focused on handmade arts and crafts as well as vintage items. There were these creepy stuffed bunny things that seemed to be staring into my soul. I have no clue how that lady sells any of them. A stand that I really liked had a ton of vintage tins and glass bottles. It would have been a great place to pick something up for my dad if I didn’t already have something for him. For some reason, this market made me want to buy a tea set. A few stands were selling vintage tea sets, and one stand had tea cups converted to candles. I never thought I would want to buy a tea set, but I guess I was wrong. I did a walk through the naval college after the market. The architecture of the buildings was magnificent. The college was just beautiful! One last thing, thanks for being good sports at Café Sol today!! I think that made every ones day!