A Quick Weekend in London - Saturday

Greenwich and Cutty Sark

We are very fortunate to "have" to go to London every so often to see our son.  I believe we don't go often enough - but maybe then it wouldn't feel like such a great adventure!

For the past 3 or 4 trips, we have stayed at a very interesting hotel called the Black Lion.  The rooms are fairly basic and there are quite a few stairs you have to deal with, but the cost of the rooms is so much less than you would expect to find in London.  However, after this last time, we have decided to up our game for the next visit and try a new place to stay.

After travelling over 5 hours on two trains, we arrived in London just after 6 and were able to meet our son for dinner at Spicy Basil - this is a required meal for us any time we are in the area.  We all just got Pad Thai and there are no pictures of this.  Just believe me when I say, it is a great meal!

Having 2 full days in London is unusual for us. We have mainly just come for weekends and this was stretched out to 3 nights - makes all the difference!  Saturday morning ended up being quite relaxed. We found breakfast at McDonald's since my husband enjoys that. Then met our son to head down to Grey's of Westminster so I could replace a lens for my husband's camera since I did break his!  Thankfully, he found a secondhand one that appeared to be a good enough replacement.

Years ago, when I realised we would be visiting London regularly, I purchased an interesting book called "London's Villages" by Zena Alkayat.  I would describe these more as neighbourhoods, but whatever they are called, it is fun to use it as a guide to see different parts of this area.  Grey's of Westminster is actually located in what this book would describe as Lower Belgravia in central London.  Since this is something we regularly do, I had not thought of referring to the Villages book to see if this is mentioned. Now that I am home and reviewing the book, I realise I will have to return to this area, not just for the camera shop, but to see things such as a bronze statue commemorating the brief time Mozart lived in the area!

After this quick visit to Grey's we headed off to Greenwich, with a minor detour to Baker Street since we have seen fabulous photos of that station recently.  Here is my attempt at this -

Greenwich had not been in our plans for the weekend at all, but we saw a leaflet describing the cable car, O2 Arena, Meridian itself, Observatory and the Queen's House (not our current Queen though) and we thought it would be fun to do something completely different.  Turned out we saw none of the above but we had a lovely few hours there anyway.  (Next time, we will get off at North Greenwich and see those!) I believe you really need to factor in an entire day to do this location right.

Our first stop was the Greenwich Market, which we had to hurry to since it was getting late in the day. We hurried through the market to get to the food area and buy our lunches.  There were so many to choose from that the three of us separated to get our own.

I got a Sicilian Rice Ball, Alan got roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and I don't remember what our son got... but he liked the look of my rice ball, he went back to get one after he finished the first part of his lunch. We did all this standing up since there was no place to sit at the time we needed to.  This is quite often the way we travel though. Too many things to see and do to worry about sitting down formally!

After our delicious lunch, we headed to see the Cutty Sark. It is a stunning looking ship and so nice to see it on such a beautiful day.  The area was buzzing with visitors and I expect it is like that all the time. There are so many places to eat and sit and watch the world go by, maybe one day we will factor that sort of thing in. Even my discovery of Starbucks virtually across the street from the Cutty Sark did not cause us to sit down.  I rarely get their coffee but always check in a new area in case they have a mug in the style I collect, the "you are here" range - and they did! So now I have an England one to add to my collection.  We did get coffee at a stand outside the Cutty Sark, which was more fun than buying something predictable and franchised!

As we walked through Greenwich Park, we happened to pass the Maritime Museum and this ship in a bottle was so pretty against the lovely sky -





We got near the hill to the Observatory and Meridian Line, but I had injured my foot a few weeks earlier and had walked too much already, so I called time on this trip and we headed back to our hotel.  But what a fabulous day we had!

"No amount of money or success can take the place of time spent with your family."  

unknown - found on Wiseoldsayings.com