Ahhhh time. The first day of any international vacation East or West, you are entirely at its mercy. You have travelled through it to a world where 6AM is the new midnight, and now it is going to make you pay for daring to move so fast. All you can do is struggle to stay awake until a "reasonable" hour in your new time zone, so that you can finally be on time.
The activity we chose to keep us on time today was quite literally time. The prime meridian runs through Greenwich, and so we decided to pay the observatory where they figured out how to deal with not getting wrecked on an East/West journey a visit. Last time I was in London, my mom and I tried to go, but my mom wanted to get there via riverboat cruise, and so we did not arrive in time to tour the observatory.
This time, we used light rail, including the Heathrow Express, and got there in time to see the observatory. The observatory has many of the old telescopes they used to make incredibly accurate star charts (which could be used to find longitude based on what time a star appeared at a given angle in the sky), and the early ship's clocks that were invented to keep London time without pendulums (which don't work on storm-tossed ships). Both of these were used to figure out longitude, and form an important precursor to GPS, which works off many of the same principles.
After all that wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff, it was time for dinner. We happened upon the nearby Greenwich Market, which was comprised of a lot of craft vendors, and a lot of food stalls. Most of these were closing for the day, but that meant that an Ethiopian stall sold us a veggie dinner and a meat dinner for a grand total of £8. And they say London is expensive...
After the best Ethiopian food we've ever had, we went to a pub for some beer. Two pints set us back £8.65. Last time I was here, that would have been horrifically expensive. Thanks to the crashing pound, that's about $11-$12. Not bad at all, really. Thanks, Brexit!
Unfortunately, food, beer, and jetlag combine to put you out of commission, so it's time for bed.
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