Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Alphabet Soup
This week's Alphabet Soup finds us in the "G's" which takes us to Greenwich, England. It was a tough call between this and the Grand Canyon, but we have been spending a lot of time in the American southwest, so I thought a visit to another country was in order.
Greenwich excited me more than almost any other place in England I have visited. Probably because of its technical and scientific significance. For years I turned on the shortwave radio everyday and listen to the US Standards broadcast telling me in the time-of-day (so I could set my watch) in "Greenwich Mean Time" From that alone the place became mythical to me. It was a while before I figured out it was "just" an observatory and that the battle to make it 0 longitude had been highly political between England and France and had nothing whatsoever to do with science.Even though I knew that when I visited, the childhood excitment remained.
What I did not know, prior to my reading before our first trip to England, was the hisorical importance of Greenwich in general to Great Britain. It has had a massive role in the maritime tradions of Britain, and those traditions ruled the world for a time.This Naval History museum is, first of all, stunning when viewed from the waterfront like this. You see it coming forever is you approach on the water. As a museum it is also amazingly valuable. It contain the very uniform that Lord Nelson died in, bullet hole apparent. That is just one of those "gee-whiz" sorts of things that you can;t quite believe you are looking at.
The place is also a photographer delight. (This is not my work, it was too cloudy the day I was there) As you can see the architecture and setting makes for some incredible opportunities.Greenwich was a personal highlight of my first visit to London. I recommend it to any visitor, whi has even a passing interest in anything naval, and particularly in the technology of sailing.
