Second Star to the Right: Many Crossings: Rivers, Roads, and Hemispheres

This has been such a busy week with adventures and work to be done! This morning I turned in my midterm essay and it felt wonderful to have it out of the way! It was the perfect beginning to a very busy day.

The entire group took the tube over to Westminster Pier where we hopped on a boat that would take us down the Thames. It was such an amazing and beautiful journey down the river. We basically had the entire boat to ourselves, because surprisingly tourism has actually gone down. We were talking with the owner of the boat, and he said that the Olympics actually kill tourism for most locations outside of the Olympic village. This is because people that would usually come for everything else are scared away because they think it will be way too busy. So I was very surprised when we went to Westminster (Parliament) and there weren’t any people there. Anyways, back to the boat. We rode the boat down the Thames and got to see lots of beautiful sights. The clouds came back and it even rained a bit as well, which I loved. My favorite part was when we went under Tower Bridge, which is one of my favorite sights. Our trip ended in Greenwich where we hopped off and went exploring.

First off we all went to a Sailing Museum that had a lot of cool exhibits about the history of boats and stuff like that. They had examples of old Viking vessels, an exhibit about the Titanic, history of pirates, and lots of other things about boats. I didn’t think that there were museums for these sorts of things, but I guess you can make a museum of whatever you want as long as it’s old enough. We spent most of our time in the children’s room where we drew pictures and put on hats. After going through the museum we went over a few blocks to where they have a sign and markings on the ground that mark the Prime Meridian. We all took turns straddling the line, meaning we were standing on the Eastern and Western hemispheres as the same time. There wasn’t actually too much to see as it was just a line on the ground and a plaque on a fence, but there were actually a lot of people their taking pictures. We enjoyed ourselves.

The entire time I have been here I have been resisting going to a restaurant called Nandos. Everyone in the center has been in love with it and goes there frequently, but I didn’t ever think I needed to go. However, today I was really hungry due to all of our adventures and I finally gave in and went with people to this restaurant. I must now repent, as it was absolutely delicious. I got a great chicken sandwich with mash (mashed potatoes). I just wanted to eat more right then. I think I shall be going back.

We stopped to take photos for a bit and found some fun policemen that decided to “bomb” our photo. Coolest. Policemen. EVER. We all then traveled to the Greenwich “Air Line” that took us across the Thames. They recently built a gondola system that carries people across the river to the Olympic village. It was actually very inexpensive, being about £3 to cross. It was really fun and showed us a great view of the Olympic sights, though it felt weird to be riding in a gondola like that and not be going up a mountain to hike or ski. We got off and made our way into the Olympic village, which was crazy crowded, as expected. It was so cool! Unfortunately we were promptly told we had to leave because they were closing down the whole sight to the public and only ticket holders to the Opening Ceremony were allowed to stay. This we did not know, and though we were a little bummed to leave it was still fun to see the village.

We came back to the center to rest for a bit and have dinner before going to Hyde Park to try and watch the Opening Ceremony on their giant screen. We had more disappointment as we found out that you could only see the screen if you attended a ticketed event that cost £60 (more than $100). There was a free viewing in another park, but it was completely full by that time. We still had fun walking around the festivities and we even had a local news channel stop interview us for a bit about where we were from and what we were doing for the games. It was really cool, until the crazy man jumped in front of the camera and started throwing F-bombs and Flipped the camera off. The reporter apologized to us and turned to crazy man and said, “That was not very nice.” Very random stuff, but fun too.

We decided to go back to the center and stacked all the tables in the kitchen so that we could sit on the floor with blankets and watch the ceremony on the TV there. We bought lots of candy and are having a great party. The party is still going now, but I have decided to hurry and type up this blog post while we are watching all the different countries come through. It wasn’t the big spectacle we were planning on, but it is still so cool that we are able to watch the Olympics in London. I am grateful for the people that I get to share this with, and the fun times that we get to have. The United States should be coming soon, so I will hop off for now! Until tomorrow!