Dropping the ball

My day started very early, as it was finally time for me to go to Nia in London! I’d been in touch with Laura, the teacher, and she’d even asked me to teach a track or two. (If you’re wondering: she asked, I didn’t ask her. Really.) I’d scoped out the location twice yesterday, because it’s not far from the launderette. Laura had suggested I get there a bit early so we could chat, so I left the hotel at 6:50 and walked over. When I got there nobody was there and it was locked. I waited around a bit and Laura ran up all out of breath – she’d overslept. It’s a new class and there was only one other person there. I wasn’t all that pleased with how my teaching went – I was struggling with finding the beat, and when I got lost I stopped instead of just keeping on going – but it was a good time anyway. She was doing the routine Earthsong, which I’ve never learned but know most of, which made it even more fun.

So that was my thing I wanted to do. I stopped on the way home at The Cornish Bakeshop to get a pasty, another thing on my list. I’ve had them several times in the US and wanted to try an authentic one. Well, it turns out that the ones I’ve had in the US are pretty authentic… just not very good. I ate about ¾ of it and that was plenty. Dave had a bite also and wasn’t very impressed. I took a quick shower and we headed off for Dave’s highlights in Greenwich.

You can get to Greenwich a couple of ways, but since it was a nice day we took the river cruise from Westminster pier. It took about 45 minutes and we had a very entertaining and knowledgeable guide. We went under Charing Cross railway bridge, which meant we were over the Charing Cross railway line – 3 forms of public transportation stacked vertically. I also liked what he said about one of the bridges – “there are 38 interesting bridges over the Thames in London, and this isn’t one of them. The only things to say about it are that it’s green and it keeps the trains from falling in the water.”

We got to Greenwich and headed up to the Flamsteed House & Royal Observatory. There are two ways to get there, and we took the best one, up the King William walkway through Greenwich park. It was so nice to be in a quiet place with birds and no cars at all! London is always busy, and the part where you have to remember to look the other way for traffic makes walking about a little nerve-wracking.  Also there are two paths once you get up the hill, and the one we took (the one less travelled) is tree-lined and peaceful, and goes by the Royal Observatory Garden, and has gorgeous views between the trees. So it all started off very well.

Flamsteed House is the location of the Prime Meridian. So you can stand on 0 longitude, with one foot in the eastern hemisphere and one in the western. It’s also home to two other meridians, Bradley’s and Halley’s, each of which were prime at one time but got demoted when a successor astronomer got new, better equipment. Here’s hoping the current one has a long and happy life. So we took pictures of us straddling the hemispheres and then walked through the Flamsteed house, where the Harrison Clocks sometimes are but weren’t today. Since the Harrison Clocks are currently at the National Maritime Museum, there was be lots of empty space in the house, so they invited a bunch of steampunks to do a twisted history. So side-by-side in the house you have real historical things and made up historical things, and real history signs and made up history signs. We do not approve. We did manage to get our watches set to the atomic clock, though, which was good. And there was lots of real and interesting history of timekeeping in the Royal Observatory, as well as a cool old telescope. And in the astronomy building they have lots of cool demonstrations of things like planetary occultations and the temperature of spectrums, but it was really annoying because I never understood what they were demonstrating until we were past it and there was an explanation. Then we realized we were going around the circular room in the wrong direction.

We has almost missed the Royal Observatory and astronomy buildings because we thought we were done, but then we got halfway down the good path (which has a weird metal fence entrance that you go into, and then swing a gate and step out of) we realized we’d missed half the stuff. And that worked out well, because Flamsteed house is the site of the original dropping ball that New York imitates on New Year’s Eve. It drops every day at precisely 1:00, although Dave was somewhat disgusted to discover that it’s 1:00 GMT in the winter and 1:00 BST (British daylight savings time) in the summer. So the timing worked out perfectly, and we were right there when it dropped. It reminded me a little of an eclipse because there was a time when everyone was getting out their cameras and pointing and looking in the same direction. Dave has a video of it dropping. I don’t know what I’d expected but it was more than what happened, which is that the ball went to the top of its pole, and then went back down the 2 or 3 feet. It was somewhat anticlimactic and very funny. The reason for the ball is that it’s visible from the Thames, so ships headed out on a long voyage had one last chance to set their clocks.

By this time my pasty had worn off and I was very hungry, so we headed down the hill and stopped at the first pub we came to. I had a lamb burger and Dave had a hamburger, and they were both painfully dry. But we both enjoyed our respective beers very much, and the French fries were superior – they’d clearly been cooked twice, so they were super light and fluffy on the inside and crunchy on the outside. Jen might have never left.

Next stop, the Cutty Sark, the fastest clipper on the Tea Run from China. It’s been raised off the ground the preserve its keel, and you can walk around inside and underneath. It was probably my favorite part of Greenwich because it’s fascinating and you can touch everything. They’ve done a really nice job of restoring it and also telling its history. Also I liked that it had fake pigs in the bow making recorded pig noises. For extra credit, why would you put the smelly pigs in the front of the ship? An odd thing about the ship is that both of us felt that it was swaying like a ship at anchor – we couldn’t figure out if it was all in our heads, or the deck was uneven, or what. We liked that too. Also the drink holders on gimbals in the officers’ saloon.

Last stop for the day was the National Maritime Museum, which is where the Harrison Clocks are currently residing. They were created by John Harrison in the mid 1700s to win the Longitude prize. There are three of them, and one smaller one. The story of the clocks is told in Dave Sobel’s wonderful book Longitude, and Dave has wanted to see them ever since he read the story. So we went, and we saw them, and they’re still ticking, like Timex watches, only much more intricate and gorgeous. My favorites were H1 and H2, which have dual pendulums connected by springs and wooden parts surrounded by gleaming brass. The exhibit does a good job of explaining the history and the clocks are just brilliant. It was worth the trip.

We tried walking around the museum some more but we were both just beat, so we headed back to the rail station. On the way we passed the Greenwich market, which had lots of food stalls (we should have eaten lunch there!) and flea market stalls. The train from there is on the Dockside Light Rail, and the Oyster card works there too. It goes through the high-rise part of London, winding its way around the Thames and the tall buildings, and every time I woke up it was interesting. It connects in to the very long passageway between the Bank and Monument tube stations, so we walked to Monument and took the tube back to Victoria, our home station. We were both glad to get back to the hotel and sit down.

Then the problem of dinner cropped up. We weren’t sure if we were going to be back from Greenwich in time for dinner, so we hadn’t made any reservations, and all the food around our hotel was unappealing, and it was making me feel very whiny. Fortunately Dave stepped in and found a place near Covent Garden that sounded interesting and had an opening at 8. That was good because it gave us some recovery time and gave me some writing time.

The very best thing we did on this part of the trip was to get comfortable with the tube right away, because it’s given us the freedom to go where we want without worrying about how we’re going to get there or paying for taxis. We both felt perfectly comfortable looking for dinner spots anywhere, because we knew we could get there. So we headed out around 7:30. The first train we caught, a Victoria line train, was completely empty when it came to the station. When we got to Oxford Circus to catch the next train, though, the platform was already pretty full and the next train was showing 4 minutes away. By the time it got there, the platform was quite full and so was the train. I’m not sure I actually walked on to the train – it’s possible that I just sort of surfed on the wave of bodies going in. It was very squishy, but we only had to go one stop. Tottenham Court Road Station, where we got off, is one of the older, unremodeled stations and has great tile mosaics everywhere, which we liked.

Here’s what though – most of the tube stations have multiple exits, and you come up and have no clue what direction is what, and sometimes the street signs (which are on the sides of the buildings) are covered by construction. So we wandered in circles a bit, but eventually found the restaurant, a Brasilian BBQ place called Cabana. It was very crowded and noisy, and the menu was a little overwhelming, but we had a great waitress who took us in hand and basically told us what to order. I really, really liked the food, and they either turned the music down or we got used to it. One of the waiters had made a hat out of a banana and the top of a pineapple and was shimmying around the room – it was that kind of place.

We found our way back to the tube stop with no problem, and the trains, while still full, weren’t uncomfortably crowded. London has felt very overwhelming most of the time, but not underground. We will miss it.

What are humped pelicans? What zone is ending? And what about Naomi?