Greenwich, London, July 13, 2011

Our first stop today was the Royal Conservatory where we learned about time. As you see in the photo, the students are standing on the Prime Meridian, one foot in the western hemisphere and one foot in the eastern hemisphere.



After leaving the very crowded conservatory, we walked down to Greenwich. On our walk, we were reminded by all the construction for venues in Greenwich Park that the Olympics will be in London next summer. There were signs of preparations for the Olympics all over London. We spend a good bit of time in the market buying food and candy from the vendors. Henry and Matthew found huge balls of candy.


All the boys took turns wearing the Knights helmet that the found in the Discover Center at Greenwich. The Cuddy Sark was still under construction after it burned several years ago, so here again we found much construction in preparation for the Olympics and the rebuilding of the ship.







We tooks a sightseeing boat down the Thames from Greenwich to Westminster. The captain of the boat gave us a narration of what we were seeing from the boat.







It was cold, cloudy, and windy as we went down the Thames, but it became a little warmer as we reached Westminster. We were glad we had jackets and that it did not rain on us.



























One of the most exciting sights was the Tower of London Bridge and the Tower of London.











Our boat docked right under Big Ben, and we made our way across the bridge through huge crowds to the London Eye. London is full of people this year, and the lines for the Eye were very long, but moved quickly for such a crowd. From the London Eye we could see Parliament, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathederal, and a panoramic view of all of London. One student even thought they spotted the Effiel Tower. It did look like the tower, but I'm sure we did not see that far! There was a beautiful model and a young man being filmed for a commercial or movie on a balcony overlooking the London Eye. The students were excited to watch this as we turned, and even more excited when the model waved to them. It was fun to watch the street performers below us in the park.

Fate and Henry



















Andrew, Max (under the hood), Fate with his back to us. We were on the Eye with a group from Charlotte Latin and Trinity Lutheran.

As we looked down from the Eye, we saw our tour buses (yellow and red) waiting to take us back to Charterhouse after a fun day.