Tuesday 6 January 2015

A Trip to Greenwich & The Royal Observatory

Before Christmas I went on a Nice Day Out with my dad to Greenwich. It was a gorgeous winter's day!


We'd spotted an exhibition at the National Maritime Museum we both wanted to see and had been saying for months "oh, we must go to that exhibition soon!"... then all of a sudden the end of the year, and the exhibition, was almost upon us so off we went.

The National Maritime Museum is worth a visit just to see the awesome (and huge!) ship in a bottle on display outside.  

 

We had a cuppa and some yummy cake in the museum's cafe, explored the excellent and fascinating Ships, Clocks and Stars exhibition, bought some postcards then went back to the cafe for lunch. Based on the cake alone I am looking forward to making a return visit sometime to check out the rest of the museum!

Our exhibition tickets included entry to the nearby Royal Observatory, so we headed there next. The Observatory is on a hill in the middle of Greenwich Park, with great views over London...


... if you look closely on the left you can see the Gherkin in the distance.


The Royal Observatory was super interesting in a nerdy "science is awesome!!!" kinda way.  


It was especially cool to see the Time Ball...

 

... and to stand on the famous Meridian line!


Before heading home we popped into the neighbouring Astronomy Centre and oohed over the amazing photos in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year exhibition. I definitely want to come back here sometime to see a show at the Planetarium


Thanks to the short winter day, it was already getting dark when we headed home so we got treated to a sparkly nighttime view of London...

 

... and we got to see the awesome Meridian Laser which marks the route of the Greenwich Meridian from the Observatory. So cool.


All in all, an excellent Nice Day Out to finish my year of travels!

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