London - Day 1

Wow we have travelled so far.  The flight seemed to go on forever, it's like being in hospital trying to sleep in a plane.  Bells are always going off, people waking you up to see if you need anything, odd meals at odd times (couldn't face spicy prawns & rice for brekky! but Malaysian chicken curry for dinner was nice!).

We finally arrived, and early, at Heathrow, it was such a relief but then we sat on the tarmac for another 25 minutes waiting for our terminal allocation.  Found our driver, another relief he was there, and got a scenic trip through Chelsea to get to Greenwich.  Even managed to see Stamford Bridge on the way, go the blues!

Question though, why do people who drive for a living have such strong opinions and feel the need to lecture you on them.  We had to keep control of the conversation otherwise our Moslem driver kept returning to his British government anti-moslem conspiracy theory.

It was nice to be greeted by familiar faces at the house, though we were a bit worried as it took Daph a while to answer the door, as they were still asleep.  We all tried to have a quick nap, with varied results before heading out for our first day exploring Greenwich.

Greenwich is quite amazing, it's on the Thames and has a lot of early London history, the Royals lived out this way in Tudor times.  Not much left from then but the Royal Park has been preserved as the historical site.  There's a lot of nautical history, it's the location of the National Maritime museum, the Royal Naval College and the restoration of the Cutty Sark clipper.

We walked to the park and visited the Royal Observatory, home of the prime meridian and Greenwich Mean Time, visited the Queens House, designed by Inigi Jones in 1616 for King James 1.  It's the first purely classical building in England, based on Inigo's studies in Italy for all you Grand Tour of Europe fans.

We finished our first day of sightseeing with a Thames river cruise, what a fantastic way to see to see some of London's iconic landmarks.  Ollie crashed on the trip back and didn't want to wake up to get off the boat, poor thing walked back to the house crying all the way and promptly fell straight to sleep.

Graeme did last long either after a pint with John at the local.

Hope you enjoy the photos.