Day 5: Greenwich Mean Time, Tower of London, Dirty Beefeater and an English Dinner

When living near Greenwich, one must go and see 'The Line'. Huh? What you say?

I'm talking about the Prime Meridian of the World, where longitude is 0º00'00", thereby the only place in the world where you can stand on the western and eastern hemisphere simultaneously. I still hear everyone saying 'huh?' except for all you mapping freaks. You know who you are. ;-)

On route to the Greenwich Observatory, we passed a Viet restaurant - Spuey's first! Such a relevant photo.

Whilst there was a museum there - nothing too fascinating unless you like clocks - I could not find a speckling of information to tell me why this particular spot was chosen as THE reference point for mapping. It was getting on my nerves. Surely, other people think the same? Anyway, as I suspected, it was chosen arbitrarily as the result of the need to fix a common meridian. Too bad I had to Wiki it to find out. Why couldn't they just tell me in the museum?

Enough geek griping, here's a shot of Spuey trying to start a conga dance over the line.

And here's me, err, splitting myself into western and eastern hemisphere happiness.

Ma and Pa this one's for you. No, not Bombay but Saigon.

In it's full glory.

Next was a visit to Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. I'd been wanting to visit the Tower of London for AGES!!! It is mighty impressive to see it for the first time. Steeped in history, it is my idea of nerdy heaven. Previous British monarch dwellings, executions, suspicious disappearances, crown jewels, ghostly apparitions - yippee! Fun-filled, I dare say. Shuddup - I'm a geek and proud of it too.

The Tower of London from the bridge.

Tower Bridge. Been there, done that. I'm so blase now.

My Beefeater tourguide. I didn't know that they resided within the walls.

The site of Anne Boleyn and other's beheading.

Spuey at the White Tower.

Traitor's Gate.

The icky black ravens.

Oh look, me and a beefeater bear.

Spuey too.

We insisted on having a photo with a real-life beefeater. Something that I will thankfully never do again.

Oh look, the beefeater didn't touch Spuey. Meanwhile my experience went like this:

Me: Excuse me, do you mind if I have a photograph?
Beefeater: You can do anything you like to me, young lady. *puts arm tightly around waist*
*cringe and internal vomit*
BE: So where are you from?
Me: Australia
BE: Is that your boyfriend?
Me: Errr NO!!!!!!! That's my brother.
BF: Are you ticklish?
Me: No

Photo finally taken. Eeeeew!!!! I'm so glad that I'm not ticklish. Who's knows what would've happened next. Dirty ol' Beefeater.

We met up with Smee afterwards in Aldgate for dinner and Spuey managed to tick another thing off his list - a traditional English dinner - curry.