We woke up that day wanting to just stay in bed, staying warm under the blankets. The morning was cool, wet and gray. We were slow to get up. By then we were in full vacation mode, lazy and threw the schedules out the window. 
I’d wanted to go to Greenwich Market that morning but the husband was not into shopping, and it was his birthday after all. So instead of taking the fast route to Greenwich, he wanted to take the Thames cruise. Boys and boats…*sigh*. I’d printed out a 2-for-1 offer for Catamaran Cruisers before we left, but when we got to the Embankment pier they had a special offer: 50% off everything anyway. I suspect it’s because of the dreary drizzle that morning. It was their first scheduled trip to Greenwich at 10:00 am but there were already a group of people queuing, about 20 or so Italian tourists eager to get on the boat. They were all chatting happily, more energetic and lively than we were, despite being seniors. Let’s just say that the husband and I are not morning people, we were still waiting for the caffeine from our lattes to kick in. Costa Coffee around the corner from our flat was a regular stop, the staff there were always friendly and the coffee better than Starbucks in my opinion.
When we got on the boat, everybody pretty much went and stayed in the fully-covered lower deck because of the rain. I gotta say I wasn’t impressed with the interior of the boat, the carpet was decaying, and the seating uncomfortable. But we just made the best of it, sat on the very front and enjoyed the view from the windows that surrounded the deck interior. The trip to Greenwich took a little over an hour, with a complimentary live tour from the boat operator. It was quite nice, and the rain wasn’t so heavy that we couldn’t see the buildings and landmark mentioned on the tour. We stopped at Waterloo, Bankside, and Tower Piers, with only two other people joining us from Waterloo.
Greenwich Pier was near empty when we arrived. We walked to the National Maritime Museum, just a short distance from the pier. Not a lot of people were around, it’s a nice change from the crowded central London. 
I was surprised to see the Maritime Museum building, from photos I’d seen on the website I got the impression that most of the building was white, instead most of the building was…peach (with sections painted in white). I guess the photographers didn’t set the white balance on their cameras correctly. I think the building looked more cheerful in peach anyway 
The admission was free, but we still had to get tickets at the front desk. I thought that maybe they just wanted to keep track of the number of visitors, but we had to actually show the tickets after having coffee at the Regatta Cafe. The ground floor of the museum, and the court just above it was bathed in light, spacious and airy. The displays were quite diverse, from figureheads of historical ships to a vortex machine. We moved on from there to the “Passengers” section of the museum, where passenger ships models and interior details were displayed. 
The boom in passenger travel at sea came during the 19th and early 20th centuries, brought upon by the massive expansion of emigration, and later, tourism. I guess taking a cruise for vacation was much more for the rich back then.
The museum was definitely the husband’s cup of tea, if I didn’t remind him that we couldn’t possibly see everything in this museum we would have missed visiting the Royal Observatory. He finally decided to focus on Nelson’s Navy Gallery and Ships of War, a small gallery filled with models of battle ships. I must have been tired (or bored?) since I dozed off on one of the comfortable chairs while he analyzed every single nook and cranny on the models. Now I know what he must have felt when I examined every single brush stroke on the paintings in The National Gallery. The Nelson Galleries proved to be much more entertaining to both of us. 
There was a super awesome electronic display of The Battle of Trafalgar with an audio guide describing the progress of battle, complete with the ships’ path that you could see just by touching the surface. The famous uniform worn by Nelson during battle, with the fatal bullet hole clearly visible, was a huge hit amongst visitors. One guy even broke the no-photography rule by quickly snapping a photo of it when the guards weren’t looking. I was reading the notes accompanying the display and got confused by the mention of one Emma Hamilton, to whom Nelson bequeathed his lock of hair (pigtail). My thought was, “Did she not change her name when she married him? How progressive! Or maybe they were just dating at the time?” Let’s just say that “dating” is an oversimplification of their relationship. My partner, who took a naval history course in college and reads books on the subject, never knew about Emma Hamilton and was quite shocked by Nelson’s tawdry affair. We read the displays concerning Emma Hamilton in amazement. There were love letters, caricatures making fun of pregnant Emma (they had a daughter), and the bizarre ménage-à-trois between Nelson, Emma, and her husband. It’s an unexpected side of Nelson that we weren’t aware of. It’s such a contrast from our previous experience, after visiting Trafalgar Square where his figure was immortalized on a monument, and his glorious tomb in St. Paul’s Cathedral with the audio guide’s vivid description of the grand funeral procession. The man was almost godlike, that day we realized he turned out to be a regular man after all, despite all the monuments and memorials.
Up the hill across Greenwich Park, we went to the Royal Observatory, the site of the Prime Meridian. I’ve done my share of visiting geographically significant spots before, like the Four Corners in Southwest US, the International Peace Gardens straddling both Canada and the US, and the equator line in Indonesia. I was happy to add the Prime Meridian to my list. A lot of people flocked to this area on the Observatory, I counted at least 3 French school groups with about 10 students in each. My partner commented on how he thought there’s always at least one geeky kid in any school group no matter what the nationality and he could always spot them. 
Sure enough, he pointed to a kid wearing thick glasses, quietly reading a book about the Observatory, while his classmates were monkeying around. “How did you know?”, I asked. He replied, “Well, it takes one to know one.” When we entered the building we were required to put our umbrellas in little plastic bags to stop the water from dripping everywhere. Good for the museum, bad for the umbrellas since the water can weaken the fibers thus damaging them. Oh well, they’re cheap enough anyway. Being astronomy freaks, we felt at home in the Observatory. It was smaller than say the British Museum, so at times it was hard to maneuver around other visitors. Regardless, it housed an impressive collection on the history of timekeeping, astronomy, and their ties to the rise of British naval power.
I was very fond of the story of Harrison, and his struggle to solve the longitude problem. The chronological display of his inventions, from H1 to H4 was really inspiring, and in the end H4 was a simple, elegant solution to the Longitude Problem. The human stories behind scientific innovations always fascinate me, because as I know personally behind the cold hard facts, instruments, and long hours in the laboratory, there’s a frail human being with faults and emotions. At one end of the spectrum was the extreme example of the Longitude Lunatics (although they weren’t legitimate scientists), and the other was the more commonplace scientific rivalry between Newton and Flamsteed (with Halley tagging along). We were lucky to catch the beginning of a short presentation by one of the guides. He was quite knowledgeable and entertaining. 
During the presentation he claimed that the phrase “on the ball” came from the Time Ball that falls back down to the bottom at precisely 1:00 pm (there are others who don’t agree, but I’m not a language expert).
We decided to take a prolonged stroll in Greenwich Park, heading back towards the pier. The rain had subsided, we actually saw large patches of blue in the sky. A few people were out and about, there was a boy playing with his adorable Golden Retriever, it made us really miss our dogs. I wanted to stay a bit longer in Greenwich, but the husband wanted to take a boat cruise back to central London, so we hurried to the pier. 
This was when Catamaran Cruisers disappointed us. Apparently they canceled a boat without telling us, so a bunch of people were waiting by the pier wondering if the boat would ever come. Eventually it showed up, more than half an hour later and when I complained the staff dismissed me. Needless to say I don’t recommend them and would never use their services again. On the upside, the cruise back was a lot more pleasant since the weather’s cleared up, so we were able to go on the open top deck of the boat. It was nice to catch a glimpse of the Golden Hind, 
and other landmarks in London we’d never have the time to see up close in this visit. When we arrived we also took a brief stroll around the Embankment, checking out Cleopatra’s Needle and the sphinxes. There were scars on the pedestal of the obelisk and on the sphinxes’ bases, caused by fragments of a bomb dropped by German airplanes in 1917. Afterwards, we went to a nearby Costa Coffee to rest, and to have some cookies and lattes.
We were short on groceries by day 5, so we went to an M&S Simply Food not far from our flat. I really liked the location of our flat in terms of the conveniences. There was a Boots nearby, tons of coffee places, a Sainsbury’s and a Patisserie Valerie. I decided to splurge and spent 99 pence on a bouquet of Sweet Williams…so pretty! M&S had a variety of crisps flavors, many were different than those we found in Waitrose. We bought crisps in small bags for our picnic lunches. Throughout our week in London, I think we only spent one lunch eating out, so we saved quite a bit of money. Most were sandwiches, a few were simple pasta dishes. Anyway, there we were with our hands full, carrying the groceries back to our flat when a tall, large woman stopped us asking for 50 pence in bus money. I gave her a look of disbelief, eyed her up and down: she was a well-dressed woman in her 40s, smoking a cigarette, and sporting a nice handbag. I thought, “OK, this woman is either scamming me, mentally unstable, or telling the truth.” I had exactly 50 pence in my pocket, and thought that it’s not a bad price to pay just to have the experience of giving change to the nicest looking hobo I’ve ever seen. The husband did not approve but hey, stuff like that is what makes travel interesting. The Harrods Hobo as I called her will continue to spice up my London travel stories. I certainly had my share of lunatics that day, from the Powder of Sympathy to solve the Longitude Problem, to a hobo tart who carried a nicer bag than I did.
