London

Jun 092010
 

Day 4

A Nice Way To Start The Day

A Nice Way To Start The Day - Hot chocolate across the street from our apartment.

Our primary goal for Wednesday was to see Parliament in action, but that wasn’t until 3pm, so we started out with a visit to the War Museum underneath the ?? building. The museum is the underground bunker where Churchill and his Cabinet and staff ran the British effort in WWII from. Many of the rooms were locked up in 1945 after six straight years of use – they remain today in exactly the condition they were left in. Other rooms have been rebuilt based on photographs taken during the war to reflect authentically how they looked at the time. Connected to the War Museum is the Churchill Museum – a fascinating collection of photos, recordings, quotes and memorabilia of the Churchill’s life and career.  This was all a tangible reminder of why they are called the “Greatest Generation.”

Winston Churchill

A faux Churchill making a call to FDR on display in the War Museum.

Churchill Museum

A wonderful interactive timeline of Winston Churchill's life in the Churchill Museum. Sliders along the side of the projected timeline allow you to select a year, which opens to months, which open to individual days with details in them.

Trafalgar Square was the next stop, with a brief pause in front of Downing Street, where Kevin spotted Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg walking past us on his way to Parliament.  Somewhere between Downing Street, Trafalgar Square and the pub where we had lunch Sarah’s purse was slashed by someone presumably trying to steal her wallet. Luckily the purse had three internal layers and the slice only made it through the outer two, though a nick was clearly visible in the third layer. Nicked but not ‘nicked.’

St. James Lake

Overlooking the lake in St. James Park on the walk to Parliament. The London Eye and home of the Horse Guards can be seen beyond Duck Island.

We arrived at the Parliament Building around 3pm and managed to work past other people waiting in line thanks to now knowing someone on the inside. We sat in the gallery on the second floor of the House of Lords and watched the 30 minute open comment period that opens each session. Topics discussed included whether prisoners should be allowed to vote, tax treatment of low cap stock investments, and the impact of the BP Deep Water Horizon crisis on BP’s dividend. BP accounts for 14% of Pensions’ income in Great Britain, so not paying a dividend would have a huge impact on people living off their pensions.

After the House of Lords we sat above the House of Commons and listened to two first year Members of Parliament (MPs) give their maiden speeches. They were interesting, but generally focused on more local issues than what we heard in the House of Lords. Seeing Great Britain’s government in action was definitely a highlight of the trip.

Photography is not allowed inside Parliament, so we’ll have to go with this:

A Nice Way To End The Day

A Nice Way To End The Day - A pint of Guinness in a local pub.

That evening we watched Prime Minister David Cameron’s 30 minute Q&A session before the House of Commons on TV. Prime Minister’s Question Time opens the House of Commons once a week and is a spirited back and forth between the PM and MPs, with perfect British politeness and formality tempered with insults and wit. Because it is Question Time, there is a Jeopardy strategy of all statements being presented in the form of a question.

Jun 102010
 
Thames Boat Tour

Bow view of Tower Bridge

Thursday kicked off with a boat tour of the Thames from London to the Thames Barrier with a stop in Greenwich. Though it feels now as if the river banks are primarily high end housing and shopping, the water’s edge in London began as a shipping port for Ancient Rome and kept its Maritime focus of shipping, wharfs and ship building until the last few decades. In fact, the word “wharf” began as WareHouse Along River Front.

London has always been susceptible to flooding by the tides in the English Channel which affect the level of the Thames by up to seven meters. The decorative lion heads along the river walls were places for ships to tie up, but also acted as a water level warning to the citizens, “When the lions drink, London’s in danger.”

River's Edge

Lion's head along the river's edge.

To protect the city now, they have built the Thames Barrier – an enormous moveable dam downriver that can be closed during unusually high tides to keep the city from flooding. Since its construction in the 1980s, it has been used over 180 times to protect the city, with annual usage increasing. The Barrier was the farthest point on our boat tour and an impressive sight to see.

Thames Barrier

Thames Barrier

Thames Barrier Piers in Maintenance

Thames Barrier piers. The barges are doing maintenance on one of the adjustable dams.

Greenwich was our only stop along the tour. We spent a couple hours at the original Royal Observatory: the defining point of the Prime Meridian (0 degrees longitude) and the longtime home of World Time, the standard time to which the rest of the world synchronizes.

In Front of the Royal Observatory

In front of the Royal Observatory. I'm not sure what Kevin's thinking here.

The museum and tour explain the King’s original goal of setting up the observatory to collect astronomical data to aid navigation. It explains sextant navigation and the importance of accurate star data to calculate your longitude, and the necessity of an accurate sea-going clock to synchronize your observations with star data created elsewhere on earth. That ‘elsewhere’ was Greenwich, and thus it became defined as the Prime Meridian. The development of an accurate sea-going clock was so important that the government set up a 20,000 Pound prize for anyone who could build one. John Harrison claimed the prize in the 1760s after 40 years of clock development – the museum has versions I through IV (the winning clock) on display, along with many other attempts. We spent quite a while studying the various mechanisms to understand the maker’s design for overcoming the rolling of the ship that would keep a common pendulum from working properly. The museum also houses many of the clocks that for hundreds of years kept the official World Time, until the now-official atomic clock was developed.

Given that Greenwich is a rather geeky stop, and one that I assumed would only be of interest to someone at least familiar with Greenwich Mean Time, I was rather surprised to hear one of our boating companions exclaim as he exited the boat back in London, “I wonder why it feels warmer in London than it did in Green Which?”

Speaking of green witches, after some R&R time we cleaned up and headed to London’s Theater District for dinner and a play. We had a nice Italian meal before going to the Apollo Victoria Theater to see “Wicked.” Sarah had seen the play in SF, and thought the London version was not as funny but musically better.