[ Feb.2019 ] We got up early in the morning on Sunday, when we had known that it would be sunny, and went to Greenwich in the east of London.
We took a couple of underground trains and in the end we travelled with the driverless Docklands Light Railway.
We got
off at Greenwich station on this line, but found that it was the wrong decision.
The station that was one stop before this one was called ‘Cutty Sark’ and I noticed that many people got off there.
That was because ‘Cutty Sark’ station was the nearest to the centre of the town.
So we walked from the very quiet Greenwich station towards the centre and looked for a chain café, because we were a little hungry after the long journey.
However, we found that there were no chain cafés, such as ‘Pret A Manger’ or ‘Caffé Nero’ in Greenwich.
There was a ‘Costa’, but that is not our favourite.
In a way, it is a good thing that there were not many chain shops.
So we went into one local café and had a cappuccino and a croissant and went to the Old Royal Naval College, which was just in front of us.
The reason we went there was to get some information from the tourist information centre on these premises.
I had been to Greenwich many times, but this was the first time I had been to the Old Royal Naval College.
Entering the place, we found a huge room with some exhibits related to the navy and at the end of the room, there was the information desk.
We bought a map of Greenwich for £2．
The information officer was Chinese.
She recommended a supposedly economical ticket of £24.25 (€28.17, $31.88), which allowed you to visit the Royal Observatory and the Cutty Sark, but we thought it was too expensive, so we did not buy it.
We walked around this Old Royal Naval College, which was free.
Here, there were a few Baroque style buildings in the huge ground.
A famous architect called Christopher Wren, who designed many churches in London, designed this place as a retirement home for the naval veterans in 1703.
By the early 1870s, all the pensioners moved out and after that, from 1873 to 1998, it was a training school for naval officers.
Currently, the Greenwich University and the Conservatoire of Music and Dance use some of the buildings here.
The main attractions here are the Chapel and the Painted Hall.
Unfortunately, the Painted Hall was closed because of the 2-year conservation programme and was going to open at the end of March.
We could get in to the Chapel, but they were having the service, so we could not take any photos inside.
It was a neat place with lovely light blue and gold decorations and it did not look old.
I wonder if they had done some renovation work recently.
A female priest was managing the service.
The chorus had just started, so we listened to one song.
The tune was something like the modernised Gregorian Chant and it was solemn.
The singers were all young.
It was very different from the hymns we had heard in Tenerife in Spain recently in terms of the tune and the singers.
