In the Mean Time

Time: The ongoing sequence of events taking place. But is it linear, circular, or, in the words of Doctor Who, wibbly wobbly? If you're a toddler trying to climb the hill on your way to the Royal Observatory Greenwich you could probably be excused for thinking all things, including time, are wibbly wobbly. If you're a 5 year old obsessed with running in circles chasing pigeons time is most definitely as circular as the field constantly refreshed with new pigeons. But if you're the parent of both of these said children attempting to heard them through a city such as London during the holiday season time can only be linear.

Greenwich for us while living in London was much like Stonehenge during our time in Bristol, a constant presence in our tour guide calendar as we tried to take as many visitors there as possible. Thankfully, it was much closer to our home in Croydon than Stonehenge was to Bristol and so we have many more unique memories that we were excited to revisit with the girls in the hopes of making our time a little more circular.

We arrived into Greenwich by Charlotte's new favorite mode of transportation, The Tube, and quickly made our way through the town towards the Cutty Sark. Charlotte has never shown much interest in boats so we only stopped for a couple pictures before moving on to the National Maritime Museum.

We had thought we might be able to escape the cold for a bit and walk around the museum some before ascending the hill to the Royal Observatory but there was a private event on-going so we stuck to the grounds and tried to find some interesting photos of the Old Royal Naval College.

My favorite was the Dreadnaught building! I want to take classes there!

Now it was time to climb the hill! When you look at the area on a map the distances between the Observatory, Museum and Cutty Sark appear to be very short. It's not till you're standing on the south side of the Maritime Museum and looking up at the observatory that you realize what you're in for. And quite frankly, photo below doesn't do the hike much justice either when you're pushing a stroller up the incline.

But the walk up is always worth it if the views from the top are amazing. And we already knew these were!

And you get the opportunity to stand astride the Prime Meridian!

Just around the corner from the Prime Meridian depicted in the photo above is the Royal Observatory and Museum which we had planned to go before lunch time, but with the Maritime Museum occupied the crowd of people waiting to get into the observatory was intense and I don't know about you but the face of the little one doesn't look like a patient face to me. It could have been the woppy-jawed way Dad buttoned her coat, it could have been the 35* temperatures, it could have the the previous late night combined with the lack of nap. No matter the reason, she really expressed her displeasure of the current activities.

So we skipped the Observatory and meandered our way back down the hill for an early lunch at what maybe my favorite pub in all of London, The Greenwich Tavern. It was just the same as I recalled from our last visit 9 years ago and everyone was much happier with warm atmosphere while waiting on lunch!

But alas our time in Greenwich was coming to an end and while new experiences shared with our daughters didn't create the type of circularity in time I had hoped for, I wouldn't trade our family time together for anything.