Greenwich
Heading into the final week of my internship, I was lucky to have only a 4-day week due to the summer Bank Holiday. The concept of Bank Holidays really confused me before I came to London, so I asked one of my British co-workers about them. Apparently there’s nothing really mysterious about Bank Holidays; they’re just several days throughout the year that the banks choose to take off which means business closes for pretty much everyone else as well.
At first these random long weekends struck me as extravagant, but if you add up all the American governmental holidays that most of the country takes off - Memorial Day, Labor Day, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday, etc – they add up. We just have very specific names and celebratory reasons for most of our holidays; the Brits are more like “Eh, let’s just take a day off work.”
With a 3-day weekend over August 23rd-25th, I determined to take a day trip somewhere. Megan suggested Greenwich, which is far enough from the city center to feel like a worthwhile undertaking while still remaining within the Zone 2 rail line. I was a little shy about going by myself but finally I headed off. It was a quick journey from Holborn to Bank on the Central line, and from there I switched to the DLR, the Docklands Light Railway. After a couple minutes the train came above ground, and I had a fascinating ride all through Canary Wharf.
A couple weeks before I watched a documentary on the BBC on the development of post-World War II London. The section on Canary Wharf was particularly interesting. The docklands area – for it really was the center of London’s shipping – was effectively abandoned in the 1970s when the new supertankers could no longer come so far up the Thames. The entire sizeable peninsula, crisscrossed by canals, was left derelict until several different enterprising developers thought to redefine it as London’s new business hub. They had a lot of difficulty convincing people to move their businesses and invest in an area that was still well beyond the city center, and the steep 1980s recession made everything worse. But wow, did they ever succeed.
At last I alighted at Greenwich station, and . . . had no idea where I was or how to get to the park with the Observatory and Prime Meridian. Seriously, it is not clear at all from the station, which I find hilarious, as this station is supposed to be the closest to the park. Obviously I should have gotten more details from Megan before I left, but I’d gotten so used to finding my own way in the city – where most tourist attractions are clearly marked – that I didn’t think I would need them. So as I usually do in these situations, I just followed the majority. Not very many people got off the train with me, but those that did turned left, so I did too.
We walked . . . and walked . . . and walked through suburban outlying London. If this was the close station, I don’t want to know how far away the further station is. I enjoyed it though, largely because it was so different just to be outside the city center. I mean, I saw parking lots. Parking lots! I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a full-size parking lot within the city . . . or even a parking garage, for that matter. Of course there wouldn’t be, with space at such a premium. In contrast Greenwich was so delightfully normal – normal to what I’m used to in the US, that is. I passed a little supermarket that people were actually driving to. Driving! Parking their cars in the lot! Loading their groceries into their cars! Driving their heavy groceries home with ease, not dragging 2-3 bags and a liter of milk across 4 blocks while dodging pedestrians and heavy traffic! It seemed downright crazy, I tell you.
The original observatory building built in the 1600s, with the red ball that dropped every day at noon to let ships on the Thames know the time and thus be "on the ball"