What's a girl to do?

This practice of traveling on my own is new so I had some trouble deciding what the heck to do with myself on my first real day spent in London.  With nobody requiring me to wake up early, I rolled out of bed around 8:30am, showered, and made it down to breakfast around 9:30.  As I ate I allowed Rick Steves to help me plan my day and decided to take a morning jaunt out to Greenwich.  My handy London Pass got me a free ticket down the river and I sat back and enjoyed watching the city pass by as I cruised down the Thames.  

"Action Figure Jane" joined me on the river cruise.  Here she is with the Houses of Parliament in the background.

Three trips to London and I still haven't taken a spin on The Eye.

Cleopatra's Needle

Three red buses crossing the real London Bridge.

St. Paul's as seen from the River Thames.

The Tower of London

Tower Bridge lifting to allow a ship to pass beneath.

The merry ship filled with teenage train-ees hanging from the masts.

Once in Greenwich I did what every good science teacher does…headed for the observatory.  It was a good hike up to the top of a hill, which was made longer by the closure of the park that usually serves as a short cut of sorts (they are already making preparations for the equestrian events that will be held there during the 2012 Olympic Games).  Unfortunately I missed seeing the official time ball drop at precisely 1:00pm, but I did get to stand with one foot in the eastern hemisphere and the other in the western hemisphere at the same time.  Yep, the Prime Meridian runs straight through Greenwich and this little town has the distinction of regulating world time.  I got the privilege of watching a group of boys from a school group all making nice and standing with smiles on their faces as their teacher tried to coax them all into one big line for a photo.  As I waited in the queue I made small talk with another British young man who looked to be about middle school age who was planning to shock his teacher by “planking” the prime meridian while she filmed him.  

Yep, I'm in Greenwich!

Standards of time and measure.

The official "time ball" which rises, then drops at precisely 1pm GMT each day.

Standing on the Prime Meridian!

Amusing schoolboys...

View of London from Greenwich.

Standing directly on the dividing line between the Eastern and Western hemispheres!

After exploring the observatory exhibits I decided I couldn’t leave without visiting the brand new planetarium.  I joined two groups of school children (the woman who sold me the ticket felt the need to warn me before I purchased the £6 ticket to which I answered, “I’m a teacher, I think I can handle it”) to watch the 25-minute show.  To be honest, I don’t know how much of the show I actually managed to stay awake for, but what I did see was pretty cool.  Still travel weary, I skipped the Maritime and Military museums and opted not to visit the Queen’s House.  On my way to find the DLR I came across the daily market—if you know me, I’m a shopper at heart and I love finding cool and unique things, so I was in heaven.  There were several funky stalls and I made a few small purchases to bring home before grabbing the train back into the city.  

A cute little garden store in Greenwich.

Before returning to my hotel for the day I decided to check out the Tower Bridge Experience.  I’ve photographed and driven across the bridge before but I really wanted to take in the view from the pedestrian walkways that were built to allow people access across the bridge during a lift.  I have to say, it wasn’t the phenomenal view I was hoping for, but it was still pretty neat to walk across the bridge high above the other pedestrians and cars.  It still amazes me how humans managed to engineer such things when technology was much more primitive than what we have today.  

A view from the pedestrian walkway of Tower Bridge.

Imagine being the men who hammered in all of those rivets!

Inside the engine room where the bridge mechanism used to be steam powered.

Just in case you get a hankering to wrench on the old bridge mechanism.

I need one of these signs for my classroom--hehe!

From the bridge I could see the Tate Modern Museum, which stands directly in front of my hotel, so I walked along the Thames nearly the entire way back.  As always, the distance was a bit longer than it appeared but I discovered several restaurants to check out during my stay.  I forced myself out of the hotel for dinner with the laptop in tow to do a bit of homework before heading to bed.  More fun awaits tomorrow and hopefully some sunny weather to go with it!

Southwark Cathedral

Bizarre sculpture encountered on my walk along the South Bank back to the hotel.

Recycling barges--check out all of those cans and soda bottles.

A more picturesque view.

Crossing the Pond

During my recent trip to England, I managed to keep a pretty decent journal of what I saw and did...mostly so I would remember when it comes time to turn my photos into a scrapbook.  For anyone else who is reading and interested, here's how I spent the last two weeks!

I last visited London in the summer of 2009 and for the last two years the city has been beckoning me to return.  On Monday, July 11^th I hopped on a plane and headed across the pond for my third trip to the city on the Thames.  The first day (travel) was thankfully uneventful, although I did sit next to the French/German teacher from my high school during my first flight.  The eight hour trek from Calgary, Canada to London actually went by too fast and I didn’t manage to accomplish anything productive aside from watching a couple of movies.  When I landed at Heathrow on Tuesday I was on my own and forced to navigate the London Underground with a 45.5-pound suitcase, a 20-something pound backpack (worse to manage than the suitcase), a purse, and a trusty tube map.  Though exhausted and feeling quite nauseated from the lack of sleep and too much plane food, I found my residence for my five days in London.  Yes, I’ll ashamedly admit that my map reading and navigation skills leave a little something to be desired and it took me nearly twenty minutes and some back and forth traveling before I found the place, but I did it!!  I should also note that I took my learnings from previous trips and tried asking for help.  Unfortunately this failed, but alas, I learned how to orient a map.  It was too early to check into the hotel on Tuesday so I dropped off my luggage (stupidly kept the backpack, however) and meandered about the neighborhood…until the backpack became so heavy that I was forced to park myself on a bench.  Thankfully I had a second wind and found a Starbucks just a stones throw from my residence.  I thanked God profusely for this discovery and I have become a daily regular in order to enjoy a bit of home and make use of the free wifi.  I should never have checked into the hotel at 3pm as that’s when the time change hit me like a load of bricks and I committed the cardinal sin of traveling…I took a nap…a really long one.  I didn’t even get up to have dinner.  Here's where I crashed for the first five days of my trip.

London School of Economics:  Bankside House

It wasn't a posh hotel or even a quaint little hostel, but it was clean, had a bathroom in the room, and offered a full English breakfast every morning.  Not too bad for 77 pounds a night.  Plus, who goes to London just to hang out at the hotel?  Definitely not me!

Gramps

It has been exactly a month since I've taken the time to sit down and examine what's been happening in my life.  In the last 30 days I've gone through a number of emotions, wrapped up my first school year abroad, said good-bye to my departing friends, moved to a new apartment, traveled to another new country, returned to the US, watched my parents move to a new city, helped my little brother move out on his own, and I am now sitting in my room at the Davenport Hotel in Spokane, WA (my last home of record).  


During the last week I have also watched my 91 year old grandpa take a rapid journey towards what will soon be the end of his life.  In the last twelve months gramps has undergone a list of medical treatments and surgeries that is nearly as long as the list of things I've done in the last month...spindle cell sarcoma on the knee, surgery to remove, radiation, renal cell carcinoma in the kidney, surgery to remove (yep, you can live with only one kidney), detection of nodules in the lungs, gallstones, Ecoli, surgery to remove gallbladder, nodules growing faster than expected, lungs filling with fluid, trips to the ER, and on Wednesday he got to take a trip to the hospital in an ambulance (for the second time).  Through everything the man has remained positive and his sense of humor always comes out of the surgeries and procedures entirely intact.  Unfortunately his cribbage game has steadily declined over the last year, but I'd say it's about time I finally started beating the old man after all of the times he's skunked me.


Today I got the phone call from my mom that the doctors were giving gramps about 24 hours until the end and although the thought of death is sad and difficult, I don't want him to suffer.  I know that my grandpa has lived a full life...and that he was surprised to have made it quite this long (if you've had the pleasure of hearing his experiences as a medic in WWII you'd know he never put money on making it home from the war).  He still recounts times spent with my grandma and things that my mom did to get in trouble when she was little.  He rarely complains and finds it funny when others gripe about little things (just ask him what he said to the new people who were complaining about the food at his retirement home--"It's a hell of a lot better than sea rations").  He takes pleasure in Wii bowling and winning a "Reese's Pieces" because his name was drawn on the day he wore his name tag to lunch.  Last year before his 90th birthday, gramps decided to grow a full beard and he thought it was hilarious to rebel against shaving.  I think he's going out a happy man with few regrets.  I wonder if I'll feel the same when God determines I'm through here.  I truly hope so.  

“Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.”