July 15: Greenwich

This was the only day David and I had together in London.  I had an errand to do in the morning and so we split up and David went to the Science Museum and saw Baggage's Difference Engine, one of the very first mechanical computing devices and an important part of the pre-history of our profession.

In the afternoon, David got to choose our activity (since this was his only full day in London) and he decided he wanted to go to Greenwich since it had sounded interesting when I described it after my other trip to London.  I was delighted to go again with him.  After getting horribly mixed up trying to navigate the Tube system in parallel and arrive at the same place, we made it to Greenwich.  Thank goodness for cell phones!  One of the first things we saw when we emerged from the depths was the Cutty Sark:

 

It was one of the fastest tea clippers in the world and it's just enormous and beautiful.

We got our bearings and found some lunch (my first meal of fish & chips this trip -- yum!) and then set off towards Greenwich Park.  On the way we passed the beautiful campus of the University of Greenwich:

After that, we trudged up a big hill to the top of Greenwich Park.  David was eager to get the traditional one-foot-in-each-hemisphere photo -- see his big smile?

And here's my own picture:

After the photo session we toured the little museum at the top, which used to be the Royal Observatory as well as the home of the Astronomer Royal.   We learned a lot about how using the stars to pinpoint your location was very important for sea travel.

After that we took a moment to enjoy the view from the top of that hill, with its view of the skyline of London behind the University of Greenwich:

and said hello to the statue of General Wolfe:

Non-Canadian readers may not know that General Wolfe led the British troops who beat the French in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, which is the reason that Quebec is now a part of Canada.  We weren't sure why his statue was here, but I looked him up later and learned that he grew up in Greenwich.