I went to Greenwich a couple of days ago. The weather has been wonderful this past couple of weeks, but in the morning, the weather was grey and drizzly. Joy. Anyway, Greenwich is on the outskirts of London, accessible by the London Transport system. I went with my Singaporean friend Guojing and a friend of his, and we took the Underground partway, and the elevated Docklands Light Railway (their equivalent of LRT) the rest of the way.

On the way to Greenwich, we passed through the Canary Wharf area, which was a run-down area before the 80s, but rejuvenated by Thatcherism during her reign, so the area is now a futuristic cluster of gleaming skyscrapers. Pretty reminiscent of Singapore actually. Elsewhere in London, everything is so aged (ESPECIALLY the Underground stations, many of which are older than KL), but in Canary Wharf, there's a sparkle and energy about the place (possibly because everything is so spanking new).

Greenwich itself is just across the River Thames from Canary Wharf, and the waterfront is dominated by the Cutty Sark, which is a tea clipper from the heyday of the sailing ship, and the Royal Naval College, with its Wren-designed buildings. After an abortive start (we 'accidentally' took a long underground tunnel which brought us to the opposite bank of the Thames, saw there was nothing interesting and being lazy bastards that we were, decided to take the DLR back into Greenwich...fortunately there was a station nearby), we went into the grounds of the old Royal Naval College, which is actually occupied by the Trinity College of Music and part of the University of Greenwich these days. We saw the Painted Hall, which was a hall which was quite literally covered with murals on the inside, from all four walls and the entire ceiling. The murals depicts the triumphant British Empire and things like that, just a little bit on the garish side, I thought. Lord Nelson's body lied in state here before his burial in Westminster Cathedral, and a plaque on the floor of the hall commemorates this.

Next to it is the Chapel of the College. As we approached it, we could hear organ music emanating from inside. At the entrance, we saw a sign which defined our lives for the past month or so: 'Exam in progress. Please keep silent'. However, since there was music being played from the chapel, obviously there was no exam going on that the moment. As we entered the chapel, we saw a table near the front with several stern-faced people seated, and looking at the organ loft above the entrance. Wrong. There was an exam, alright. An organ exam by the College of Music! The interior for the chapel was arranged typical of an Anglican Church, but it wasn't very ornately decorated save for a mural at the rear.

After lunch, we visited the Royal Maritime Museum. They had a special exhibition on Tintin, but unfortunately entry for that was not free, so we had to forgo it. Unfortunately, since Tintin was very much a part of my childhood, along with Messr. Asterix and Obelix :). The museum as a whole was quite interesting, with exhibits on the various topics like passenger liners, maritime trade, sea exploration (they had the boat on which Ernest Shackleton made his epic trip across the Southern Pacific). Unfortunately, we were rather pressed for time since we wanted to see the rest of Greenwich, so we didn't spend much time in the Museum.

The Royal Observatory of Greenwich is perched on a hill overlooking the Museum, within a park. It is here where the Greenwich Meridian is situated. Time from everywhere else in the world is measured relative to this location. It was predictably crowded with tourists taking pictures of the long stripe marking the Meridian, and they even had machines dispensing certificates saying that the visitor was at Greenwich at such and such time (for a small fee, of course). From the observatory, a fantastic panorama of London can be seen (albeit somewhat spoiled by a few obstrusive trees). The observatory itself is now mostly a museum dedicated to charting the quest to find a way to find longitude at sea (latitude can easily be discerned by looking at the position of the stars). Initially, it was thought that observing occultations of the stars by the Moon would provide a way of doing this, hence the observatory was set up to measure the positions of stars for this purpose). Later on, a better was found of using accurate chronometers to find the local time with respect to the time in a set position (e.g. Greenwich). As a result, most of the museum is a chronophile's paradise, with all sorts of clocks and timekeeping devices. The latter part of the museum is dedicated to to a few astronomical instruments, which of course is of great interest to me, but I didn't want to delay my friends by lingering too much. Having said that, the Observatory has a 28-inch diameter refracting telescope, one of the largest in the world (most large telescopes nowadays are reflectors, with the largest having a diameter of about 10 METERS, in Mt. Keck in Hawaii).

After that, despite the drizzle, I suggested that we see some Roman Ruins in the park, as indicated in my map. After walking around for the better part of the hour trying to find it, we found that it was no more than a small pile of rocks, to our great disappointment. We were hoping for at least a few pillars or something like that.

Following that, we decided to spend a little more time in the Maritime Museum's exhibits, but it was closing time anyway (5pm), so we didn't get to see much more apart from a whole section on Lord Nelson. So we left back to Hampstead.

It was an interesting day. The Greenwich was where the British Empire was predicated upon (the ability to navigate precisely gave the Royal Navy a decisive edge in the race for control of the seas), and the town still exuded the remnants of its proud history as heart of the Empire, in the grandeur of the Wren buildings in the old Royal Naval College. Standing on the hill of the Observatory, looking across the Thames valley, where the heart of global business still throbbed in Canary Wharf and the City, I felt that the echoes of the Empire could still be heard very strongly.