Second Day of Sight Seeing

Today Michael led us on a tour of the Tower of London including a viewing of the Crown Jewels, the Greenwich Observatory and the Cutty Sark.  We had a driver today to take us around town and the kids love riding in the Mercedes minivan with the back configured with three seats facing backwards and three seats facing forward.  James has enjoyed seeing all the different types of cars here that we do not have in the US - including this one, which they all agreed should be our next car.

On our tour of the Tower of London, Michael appointed James the general of our army and he had to try to figure out how to get into the castle. The castle has actually never been taken by force; the two times it fell, it was due to treachery or bribing. And since Madeleine completed a project at school on castles, she was able to correctly identify that it is a concentric castle with a moat.  Charlotte was very upset that the English have the largest diamond in the world (seen in the Crown Jewel exhibit) and proclaimed that they should share it with the rest of us.

At the Greenwich Observatory we learned about the evolution of the machine (the marine chronometer) created in the late 1770s to track longitudes - previously ships had only been able to compute their latitude, which made navigation extremely difficult.  Madeleine has read with Brannon about the problem of longitude and the story of John Harrison and his invention of the marine chronometer, so she was able to tell us what she had learned while we viewed Harrison's inventions.  We also all stood on the Prime Meridian with one foot in the western hemisphere and one foot in the eastern hemisphere.

Our final tour of the day was of the Cutty Sark - one of the last tea clippers ever built and one of the fastest sailing ships of her time.  This was definitely Brannon's favorite tour so far.  James really enjoyed the Tower of London tour and Charlotte's favorite thing was getting a princess doll at the gift shop (she named her Princess Charlotte).

the Tower Bridge

the Tower of London

the girls with a Yeoman of the Yard (aka Beefeater)

finally convinced James to take a picture with him

pretty sure this exceeds the weight limit on our umbrella stroller

view of London from the Royal Observatory

Harrison's first marine chronometer

Madeleine on the Prime Meridian

James and Brannon on the Prime Meridian

the Cutty Sark

on deck

Captain James

on the bow

a collection of nautical figureheads (the statues found on the bow of a boat) - this was Madeleine's favorite thing of the day