Ireland Bicycling
September 2007

Introduction

We're on the road again with VBT.   We enjoyed traveling with them last year to the wine country north of San Francisco, and decided to sign up for something a little further afield -- Ireland.  (You can click here for more info on VBT's 2008 Ireland tours.)  We added a "pre-trip extension", which got us three days London.   Gayle and I had been there before, but not for quite some time, and were really looking forward to going back.  In addition to this web site, I've got the photos, with no narrative uploaded into Picassa -- so if you'd like to look at the pictures without having to listen to me blabber, you can just go directly to the England Album or the Ireland Album. Even if you want to read all this stuff, check out Picassa anyway -- its got some cute tricks, including a very nice tie-in to Google maps, a built in slideshow and a screensaver.  Not bad for free.  (My locations in Google maps may be a bit off, so if anybody has a correction, please let me know.)

Day 1 -- Arrival in London and Greenwich

A typical overnight flight from Boston to Heathrow -- delayed by less than an hour, which is pretty good these days.   We booked airfare through VBT, so they took care of all the airport transfers, and a gentleman with a car was waiting for us as soon as we cleared customs.   He took us straight to our hotel, the Millenium Bailey's located in Kensington, London.   I mention it because you probably don't want to stay there.   Don't get me wrong.  It was in a great location (right across the street from the Gloucester Road tube station).   But it was a little past its prime, and its on a fairly busy intersection meant that the traffic noise went well into the small hours of the morning.   Definitely NOT what you need with jet lag.  We got in around breakfast time and of course our room wasn't ready.   (Why is it that you can always upgrade to a much more expensive room that IS ready?)  So we left the bags and went sightseeing.

First stop, the Underground (a.k.a, the Tube).   As you can see from the map, its massive.   Many more lines and stations that even the NYC subway.   There are a couple of different kinds of tickets, mostly sold by machine.   The far is based upon the number of zones that you travel across (see shaded areas on the map).   Most of the major tourist attractions within the city of London are all within zone 1.  And here's the first big tip for tourists:  A one-way ticket within zone 1 costs £4.00 (around $8.00 at the current exchange rate).   But an unlimited day pass for zone 1 is only £6.60 ($13.20), or  £5.10 ($10.40) if you start your travel after 9:30am.   So the message is:  unless you're sure that you're not coming back (or not coming back by train), buy the day pass.
We decided to visit the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.   And the best way to get there is to take a boat ride on the Thames.  (Tube stop:  Westminster)   This let's you off right near the Houses of Parliament.  Trick question:  what's the name of the tower shown at right?   Most people say "Big Ben", but as it turns out that's the name of the bell within the clock tower.  The weather was fairly typical of the whole time we were in London -- overcast and occasionally raining.   But not too cold.
Lots of cool stuff to see along the way as the boat heads East from London to Greenwich.  Right across from the dock is the London Eye, also known as the Millennium Eye.  Basically, it's a Ferris wheel that's 135 meters in diameter.   But it looks all the world like a bicycle wheel to me.  We went for a ride on it later in the trip, so I'll put further discussion on the back burner for now.
The round building is the new London City Hall.   If you look carefully, you can see there's a helical staircase in the center.  Another icon of the skyline is the Green Gherkin.   You can get a glimpse of it in the background of the second photo.   It's lit from within at night and appears bright green -- just like a big pickle.
And of course there's Tower Bridge.  (Another tourist question:  this is not London Bridge -- they sold that and moved it to a theme park in Arizona.   Really.  YCMTSU)  And the Tower of London.  The Tower is an amazing cool place.  We'd visited on our last trip but went back again, and it was every bit as much fun as the first time.  More on the Tower later on.
After about an hour's ride, we reach Greenwich.   From the dock it's about a 10 minute walk to the National Maritime Museum, which is where the Royal Observatory is located.  The Prime Meridian,  0° Longitude runs right through the Observatory and is marked by a brass and glass line in the ground.   You can also see the Harrison clocks, which are astounding pieces of engineering.  The book Longitude, by Dava Sobel, does a fantastic job of revealing the history of determining longitude at sea, and the invention of the time pieces that made it possible.   There's also a PBS movie version of the same title, but I enjoyed the book more.  Unfortunately, they don't let you take pictures of the clocks.
We got back in time for an early dinner and crashed.