Walking around Greenwich…
It’s been about a week since I’ve last posted and I’ve mostly been pretty busy with schoolwork but some other things have been going on too! Last week, I made a trip out to Greenwich (which is an area not too far northeast from New Cross) with some other students to go to Greenwich Market and explore the rest of the neighborhood there. It was a pretty short bus ride getting there from New Cross, which was nice. The tube is pretty good for travelling into and around central London, but out here the buses are a better bet sometimes (and cheaper!). The bus system’s a little more complicated, though so I’m still getting used to navigating it…
Greenwich Market
Of course, we chose a super cold day to walk around Greenwich, but the market was still really cool (no pun intended). There were a bunch of food stands of all different cuisines, including traditional British roasts and sides, Indian dishes, Japanese teriyaki, Italian snacks, and Portuguese dishes. There were also so yummy dessert stands including a Dutch pancake stand (teeny tiny pancakes with lots of good toppings), a churro stand, a vegan/gluten-free cupcake and baked goods stand, and a crepe stand. Aside from the food, the market was filled with local artists’ stands and crafts. There was a lot of nice clothing and jewelry and other fun gifts. The cool thing about the market was the middle part was all outdoor stands but on the edges of the outdoor space, there were a bunch of storefronts that had good food and gifts as well. A lot of restaurants advertised hot mulled wine (which was tempting) and there was a cute little old-timey candy shop.
National Maritime Museum
We spent a while at the market looking around and then got something to eat. I got some great chicken tikka masala at the Indian food stand and then all of us just HAD to get crepes for dessert. We got to the crepe stand just as the lady running it left to go somewhere, and we waited (very impatiently) for about 20 minutes until she came back, but the anticipation made the ultimate crepe experience much better. I got a crepe with nutella and bananas.. mmm…
The Royal Observatory up on the hill
Our group split up before and a few of the girls we were with went off to find the Greenwich Prime Meridian Line, which is a site to see in Greenwich. The Prime Meridian is the line that marks zero degrees longitude, so it’s special! So we decided to try to find them and see the line ourselves. We wandered around for a while, following signs to it and found ourselves at the National Maritime Museum which had lovely grounds and big anchors at the entrance. We walked around the museum for a bit and finally found more signs to the Meridian Line, which is at the Royal Observatory. We did find the Royal Observatory after some walking, but we found that it was on top of a very large snowy hill which was pretty much blocked off for sledding. Between feeling like our toes were going to fall off and not knowing how to get to the Observator (we asked a museum guard about it and he basically just laughed at us), we decided to try again on a less snowy day. But we did get a good walking tour of Greenwich!
Let’s see, what else happened last week? I’ve mostly been pretty busy with my courses now that I’m getting into the swing of things here. I’ve had a decent amount of reading each week, which is good, but we never seem to talk about it specifically in class (which isn’t too much motivation to read…) so I’m definitely getting used to things being different than they are at Hampshire. I also did my laundry for the first time since being here just as I was running out of clean underwear. Apparently the laundry at Goldsmiths is not so great and the dryers only dry your clothes partially… and you have to pay for the laundry on top of it. So Maggie and I decided to take a chance on the laundromat in town instead. Ultimately, it was worth it. It was a little expensive but our clothes came out dry and it didn’t take too much time so I’ll be back at least a couple more times!
Marguerite Goes to London 