It’s really hard to read, but there’s an engraving right above the white slab that says “Greenwich Meridian Line” with the words “East Longitude” on the left, and “West Longitude” on the right.
Greenwich, the home of the Royal Observatory.
We arrived rather late, with only 90 minutes until we’d have to catch the last City Cruises boat back towards central London. There was only one thing I wanted to do in Greenwich: stand on the Prime Meridian. The map geek in me was thrilled to be able to put one foot in each hemisphere for a few photos. (Having taught cartography before, I fully understand how arbitrary and Imperialist the line is, but I digress.)
It was a ~1.5 km hike up the hill to the observatory, where we had some gorgeous views of the city. Since we were within an hour of closing time for the museum, and wouldn’t be able to make the £20 ticket worth it, we instead found the “free of charge” part of the Prime Meridian and took our photos there instead (Google where that part of the line is, it’s out of the way). Bucket list item ?!
After enjoying the grounds of the Observatory, we went back into the village for a bit (where I learned there’s such a thing as “eel pie”). We then took the boat back towards our AirBnB. For dinner we had delicious tandoori chicken and duck at an Indian restaurant up the street from our lodging. We fly home tomorrow.
If you ever get to do this one day — be sure you straddle the line. The parties in front of us didn’t seem to understand that. I was trying to explain it to the couple in front of us.I had a white charging cable hanging out of my pocket. There’s a good-sized queue of people just off the left edge of this photo so we were trying to do this as efficiently as possible. Thanks to AI, we fixed it!The town of Greenwich.I’m sad we didn’t have time to truly visit, but we’ll do another time.View from the Royal Observatory hilltop…
In all seriousness, I’ll bet eel tastes just fine. I don’t know why I find it so gross.Scenes from the dusk trip back to central London.This is Shahid Khan’s yacht. The owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars — his team was playing the Chicago Bears in London on this day. The Jaguars lost. The yacht is named “Kismet”.A monument to the London Fire of 1666. It’s inspired by a candle — a candle in a bakery is what started the fire.Don’t let the tiny storefront fool you. Thats basically a tiny little maitre’d station and a stairwell into a very old, more spacious basement area that’s been renovated nicely.This is both Dave’s and my dinners here. It was all so good!
