Day Ten July 5, 1998 London via Tube and on foot Sunday We woke up late (9:30 or so) and tired. We learned that the Marriott concierge room (free breakfast snacks) was not available on week-ends at Heathrow. Oh well. We hit the van, caught some breakfast sandwiches take-away, and ate them on our way back to the same tube station we used yesterday (Ruslip Garden). This was a piece of cake to find, since I had marked our path on the GPS, and the trail was easy to follow and the west side roads were becoming familiar to us on the second day. We took the tube and transferred once, ending up in Charring Cross station. The goal was to head out to Greenwich observatory, and to get a hoot out of putting one foot in each hemisphere (I’m sorry, I’m a geek). It turns out that the station we saw Friday night (and marked on the GPS) was a train station, and getting there required us to transfer from tubes to trains. This is an easy trick, the second time you do it. We ended up spending 20 minutes or so orienting in Charring Cross station, while everybody caught another quick sandwich. Its hard to explain the train station operations to an American, but it was awfully close to a US airport. There were television monitor and those electronic direction boards directing you to one of a dozen or so platforms. Maybe if I grew up in New York or Chicago I would have been a little more at ease. The station is the starting point of dozens of departures that criss-cross each other on the way out of town to the south west. What I mean to say is that all the trains from Charring Cross eventually make it to Canturbury and on to Dover. However, they each pass thru a different mix of intermdiate stations and stops. If you get on the wrong train, you may skip your station. Also, the instructions to the Greenwich station referenced a different station, with a 3 minute offset. Trains to that station left every 30 minutes and, sure enough, in a few minutes our train was listed and we boarded. This train followed the quaint English tradition of not having anybody collect or check tickets. It is some huge ‘honor system’ where you buy a ticket (often from a kiosk) and just walk on board. There are many signs reminding you of the huge fines for being caught on board without an appropriate ticket. We were only once asked to produce one by a uniformed agents (doing a random spot check while the train was in motion). Again, it all seemed so foreign. Within 10 minutes we disembarked from the Greenwich station, crossed over the tracks to the exit gate, and stepped out into the now familiar street that where we had just parked our car two days previously. Greenwich obervatory is located in a large urban park which was packed with families, teen-agers, bike riders and people strolling (it was Sunday, July 5th). I became intrigued when we sat on a bench to rest, plan, and take in the scene. I noticed that the family and kids were all playing ball, in twos and threes and tens and tweleves (nothing unusual about that). However, those six 16 year olds weren’t kicking a football, it was a rugby ball and they, indeed, dropped down and did a scrum. The dad pitching to his 5 year old son, swinging an oversized plastic play-bat wasn’t playing baseball, the stand behind their little play-sized home plate identified their game as cricket. Sure enough, the rest were kicking soccer balls, picnicing and laying on blankets, enjoying the lush English grass and rolly English hillside around the Observatory. We hoofed it around and took it all in, then walked off toward the light-rail station to head for the museums downtown. We needed to walk thru the ‘University district’ and the pubs were cute but we were not hungry. We stopped in a small tourist shop and filled our backpack with souvenirs. Team jerseys and fan-towels were available for every primier leage soccer team. Posters and hats, thimbles and statues, were all available and (for once) affordable. We continued toward the river, passing (without stopping for) the famous ‘Cutty Sark’ clipper ship. The appeal of walking around the deck of old ships still eludes me to this day. We entered a hundred year old pedestrian tunnel and actually walked under the Thames. While first intriguing, this evenutally felt a lot like the passageways between the concorses in the Atlanta airport. It was fun to watch the people, but other than that, it was just a long walk in a musty tunnel. On the other side, we boarded the 'light rail' train back into London, transferred to the tubes (a half-mile undergrond walk), and went on to the British Museum. It was a couple block walk from the destination tube station to the museum, and we walked past the sign identifying the London office of the University of Florida, what a hoot! At the museum, I headed directly for the two things that I went to London to see. First, the Rosetta stone. This is the stone, discovered in Egypt by Napoleon's troops that had the same passage written in 3 ancient languages. Since one language was known, the 'Rosetta Stone' enabled scholars to finally decrypt the other two. To this day, if you don't already know, the term "Rosetta Stone" is used as an idiom to refer to any object that caused confusion to become clear. It sits, almost anonymously, in a small corner of the museum. I could not help but sit in wonder in front of it. Secondly, the statuary plundered from the Acropolis in Greece. At the time of our visit, and recurring periodically, the Greek Ambassador or the Minister of Culture will implore the Brits to return these treasures to their rightful home in Athens. The statues were displayed along one wall of a large, oversized room, held aloft on clear pedistals and hidden piping (seeming to float in midair), spaced apart as they were when resident in the Acropolis. What was most wonderful was that they were at near eye level, instead of hoisted up 50 feet in the air at the top of ancient columns. We had previously been to the cheap Acropolis knock off in Nashville Tennesse so we were acqauinted with the statuary and their story. It was just a little bit awe inspiring to cast my eyes upon the real thing. After the museum, it was to a pub for a little snack and back to the tubes to head for home and to rest our aching feet. We had walked more in the last two days then we had probably done so in the previous two years! While I had not developed any blisters (yet), it was definitely time to head back to the hotel. The tube ride was uneventful, with several transfers. When we stopped at the last station, I had the presence of mind to snap a picture of us with the famous red 'underground' sign in the background. Just remember: "Mind the gap". We returned to the Ruslip Gardens station, and retrieved our car that had been parked for free (it was Sunday) for the last 10 hours. We followed the GPS markers back to the Heathrow Marriott. At the hotel, we rested our feet, cognizant that it was our last full day in London. Tomorrow (Monday), we would skirt the city and head off to the north, onto Lincoln and York. After eating our snack, I felt recharged. I was alone in this regard. I had wanted 'one-last look' at several famous places that were not easily accessible by tube and foot. We agreed to split up, and I took the van by myself back into London. I found the Marriott Regents Park by the zoo, the one that had been so difficult and unco-operative toward us, and then drove by the entrance to the zoo itself. Drove again through Picadilly Circus, all lit up after dark. Passed by Trafalger square and the various downtown palaces (Buckingham, St James, Kensington) and shot back out to the east (looking for but never quite making it to 'Abbey Road'). I spun around by the London Docks, back to Greenwich, out toward Crystal Palace but couldn't find Harrod's or the Albert and Victoria museum and never made it all the way down to Gatwick. That was my curse that night, I was driving with my GPS but I had left all my maps back at the hotel. So I took one last spin around the south side of London, followed the motorway back to the Marriott and arrived back at the hotel just as I ran out of steam. It was off to bed (after listening to everybody complain about their aching feet), and we were all asleep in two minutes flat.
	Copyright, 1999, all rights reserved
	Originally Written November 1999 Original Upload January 2000 Last Update: July 22, 2001