Prime Meridian

After getting home at midnight from my very delayed Belize turn, I woke up the next morning to find that I had been assigned a London trip that evening.  I was happy of course, since it is my favorite layover city, but a bit nervous because I was assigned position 5 on the 767 which is the Business Class Galley position.  I'd never flown that position on a long haul flight.

The purser and crew were awesome though and they helped me thru it.  It was actually easier than I thought.  I guess I had built it up in my mind as something very hard, but as long as you stay organized and a step ahead of the next meal course, it's not so bad.

This was "late late" London, our third nightly departure, so we don't arrive until after noon the following day.  We decided rather than sleep, we would just hit the ground running.  It was a beautiful day in the city and it would have been a shame to sleep it away.

My friend Adriana was on the trip and so a group of us decided we were going to head down to Westminster and hope a boat up the Thames to Greenwich.  It takes about an hour and you see plenty of landmarks as your make your way out of London.  We passed St. Paul's cathedral as well as an Egyptian Obelisk called Cleopatra's Eye.  According to the tour guide, the monument was a gift from the people of Egypt, but when I was in Egypt, it was implied that the Brits stole it, so you be the judge.

We arrived at Greenwich and made our way towards the Royal Observatory so we could see where the Prime Meridian runs thru the site.  It is the line that divides the Western and Eastern Hemisphere, and the Observatory also keeps Greenwich Mean Time, which is the standard in official time and also the point in which other time zones keep their time in relation.  Kind of a big deal.

Given that it was such a beautiful day, the park was bustling with people.  I made sure to get a foot shot for my album and visited the gift shop for some postcards.  After spending a some time at the top of the Observatory, we made our way back to a local pub for some refreshments.  I had a strawberry flavored beer that was quite tasty.  It was a mild day, so I found it to be sweet and refreshing.  Just what I needed.

We then made our way out of Greenwich.  The group found a little French restaurant they wanted to check out, but I broke away from then because I had errands to run in the city before shops started to close.  After taking the train and then the tube to Picadilly, I visited a bookstore to get the new Steig Larson book for my friend Becky and the new Michael Bolton CD for my mother (I made a point of telling the sales clerk it was for her, not me).

It was still light out so I walked around a bit and headed down to Covent Garden to watch the street performers and have a slice of pizza before making my way back to the hotel.  I think staying up was the key that day because I slept very soundly and when I woke up the next morning, I was very refreshed.