Trains, boats and a big red bus

February 19, 2025

2/16 -Sunday

Today is going to be our first day meeting the Rick Steves tour group…but… that isn’t until 3pm, so I had a little of the day to explore. It was cold and a bit windy (low 30s), so I layered up and headed out to take a Thames River boat Cruise.

I wasn’t sure if taking the Underground (train)would be as quick and easy as it seemed, so I left a little early. It was easy and I got to the docks a little early so I had time to walk around the area a bit to see the sights. Right outside the subway station was the British Parliament building and the clock and bell tower called Big Ben. In the background you can see the London Eye. It was originally opened in 2000 for the turn of the century and was only supposed to be temporary - 5 years. Since it became one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world, the temporary became permanent.

I included the picture above of Oliver Cromwell outside of the House of Commons, mostly because I almost dropped my phone while taking it, in a high security area of the building, and that would have put a damper on my vacation! In the picture below, it is of the front of Westminster Abby, I couldn’t go in because mass was going to start soon.

I figured this pic showed a bunch of classics together, me - of course, Big Ben, Parliment, a double decker bus and the eye in the background!

It was time the to head out for a 1 hour sightseeing tour (boat) with our destination being the small town of Greenwich. The boat tour was really just a boat captain telling us a few stories along the way. He really was sort of “cheesy”, but I got my first look at how big London really is.

The Tower Bridge (not the London bridge like I thought it was) was mighty cool, and we also went under 15 other bridges many that were unique.

I liked this picture shown below because it has old and modern mixed together. The building on the left and right is the reconstruction of the Shakespeare Globe Theatre. It opened in 1997. The original was built in 1599, destroyed by fire in 1613, rebuilt in 1614 and then demolished in 1644. Because of fire hazards, this is the only thatched roof building in London. Then the juxtaposition of the Uber boat in front of it, was quite striking to me.

This is the Tower of London, more about that later since we are visiting on Tuesday.

The dome of St Paul’s Cathedral - we are visiting there on Monday.

We arrived at our destination and since I had a free 90 minutes, I looked around Greenwich. It is a super cute town which hosts the Old Royal Naval College and the Royal Observatory. I climbed up hill and stood on the “meridian”. As an explanation of why I thought it cool, it meant something to me since Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was used daily at FedEx. GMT is average daily time when the sun crosses the Prime Meridian at the Royal Observatory, it is the foundation for global time zones and is the legal time in Britain in the winter. In the first picture, I am up the hill at the Royal observatory looking down on the old Royal Naval College. The next is the 24 hour clock with Greenwich mean time. Then my feet standing with one foot on the east and one foot on the west side of the Meridian. Lastly, of course, a selfie looking down on the town.

On my way back down the hill I ended up going to the Greenwich market. There were tons of booths of all sorts of goods and a big street food area. I wish I had had more time to look through it longer, but I had to catch the boat to make the hour long ride back to the Westminster Pier (boat), then hop the underground (train) and walk back to my hotel in time to meet the RS gang .

First thing we did as a group was to take a 1.5 hour BUS ride on an old fashioned double decker bus that had an open top. We drove around the city and saw lots of sights, after about an hour, I froze, so I headed down and sat inside for the last bit. If you ever get the chance, sitting on the open top deck you see so much more than in the lower deck - take the top!