More tripping around

That weekend kickstarted what was to be a run of days out in London and elsewhere. The Saturday after I went to Portobello Road, I went to Greenwich. I had been meaning to go there for quite some time, and figured that I might as well do it then.

I went in early, as I had plans to catch up with Tamara later in the day to go to the Tate Britain. In the end though, the train gods were against me, and it took forever to get there. Eventually however I did arrive, and started the journey up the hill to the Royal Observatory. This proved a little more difficult than anticipated - I was still feeling pretty crappy from my cold, and got a coughing fit halfway up the hill and had to stop for fear of falling over and rolling all the way back down!


I got up there in the end, and took the obligatory photos of the prime meridian. I had a look around at all the telescopes and things, but to be honest, I'd seen what I came for and that was enough for me. I picked up a shot glass for my collection and a post card for my nan and pop, and started the journey back.

I had been planning on meeting Tamara at Leicester Square tube station, and even that proved more difficult than planned. Thankfully I knew my way around this area, as I had to walk from a tube station I hadn't planned on. Also thankfully, Tamara didn't mind that I was so late - she understood about the train gods!

We had lunch, once we found a GBK - Tamara had been told that they did great burgers. They were a bit disappointing really, but as with many other things we've seen and done, we've done it once as know we don't need to go back now. We then headed to the Tate Britain. I've made my feelings about art clear on this blog before, but we had decided that we should try to at least take in as much as we could. Honestly, I put up with it as long as I could before just taking the mick. We chose the Tate Britain over the Tate Modern on the basis that it should be more appealing and should simply make more sense. To some extent it did, but there was so much of it that looked like it was done by children. I mean, you can draw a rough square on a bit of paper and it's art. You can write three words on a bit of paper and it's art. There was someone's personal timeline hanging on the wall - my year 7 students did these!!!

Then there were the guides. There was one woman who I swear was the living embodiment of the English art snob. She was wandering around with a group, with that kind of high pitched snobby voice, saying things like, "This is from his Surrey period," and "This is simply vulgar!" I'm not ashamed to admit that most of my comments after this where uttered in her affected voice and with the same pronunciation of words. We got the giggles several times as well - I was a little surprised that we weren't asked to leave!