2nd day in London

Last 3 days in London
We have not had time to keep up to date on the blog so I will work on the first of the last 3 days.
Greenwich
This is classified as a day trip out of London but it is on the Southeast side of the River Thames and it is a nice break from a very busy inner city. The subway takes us out to North Greenwich and then we took a local bus out to the Royal Observatory. The site is really a nice little village with the Royal Naval Academy, the Queens House that subsequently was a school for sailors and the Navel Museum. The whole Royal Observatory thing started out because of the Longitude Problem. The British had a big navy and they were always running aground and sinking and lots of people were dying so the people said “do something!” to the King and his advisors said the sailors needed better charts and clocks.
Later we will learn that the Royal Astronomer complained about the Ravens at the Tower of London and so rather than getting rid of the Ravens they sent him down river. The Prime Meridian that divides the eastern and western hemisphere goes through the observatory. So the house can open up a 5 foot section of wall and roof on a perfect north to south axis and the telescope can be moved north to south but not east to west. So the astronomer would just look at whatever stars were passing over the Prime Meridian, record the time and date and over many decades this resulted in better star maps. The Royal Astronomer did not get a lot of sleep, and was often ill from the cold nights, so he was grumpy. They still have a Royal Astronomer, but the job isn’t so hands on now.
The other problem was a clock, because pendulums don’t keep time with the rocking of a ship, and the King offer 20K pounds for one that would be accurate at sea. Hooker spent 50 years working on this and H1 through H3 are pretty large, impressive machines. H4, his final version, looks like an overgrown pocket watch. It was hard work trudging up the pretty steep hill to the observatory and walking from one hemisphere to the next (and back) so we were off to look for food.
We got waylaid going to the Queens House, since Rick Steves had recommended seeing this huge painting of Lord Alfred Nelson and the Battle of Trafalgar. Ironically, it was on tour in the US. We did get to see a little of the house which was the first Neo-classical building in England and it does look a lot like a Greek or Roman building from the outside.
The have a great Royal Naval Museum, and a great place for lunch. Refreshed, we went on to see parts of the some of the exhibits. They are crazy for Lord Nelson. So we got to see his uniform in which he got fatally shot; he had earlier lost an arm in battle. We saw pictures, paintings locks of hair and later in Trafalgar Square a very large column with him on the top. As I said the English are wacky for him. Some of us at different times overcome with the exertion and emotion of it all could take a nice nap on the front grass.
After this we stopped in South London for the Coffee and Tea Museum which has apparently closed and is now a very nice hardware store. We did get to see some nice (by which Papa means he thought it was sketchy but is wrong) industrial area, a pleasant but nearly closed farmers market on the way. The names of the street can change every few blocks so navigation might benefit from the star maps or the GPS we almost brought.
We got back in time to clean up, pick up tickets and go to supper and then see the musical Wicked.
This is a play that has gotten great reviews and it is a prequel and retelling of the Wizard of Oz and is about how the wicked witch really isn’t wicked but misunderstood. The story is “cute” but the lead actresses have some impressive pipes and the whole thing is a beautiful spectacle with flying monkeys, dragons, the great wizard and some cool special effects. It was a short walk back to the hotel for our third of the three rooms we will be staying in.