A Sunday Morning in Greenwich

My in-laws arrived from South Africa on Saturday and yesterday morning we went to Greenwich.  I usually take visitors straight to Greenwich Park which is one of my favourite places in London but we’d already all gone there together in 2008 so this time we decided to go into Greenwich Town Centre.  We started off by having breakfast at Wetherspoon’s The Gate Clock and I’d really recommend Wetherspoon pubs if you are looking for an inexpensive eating experience in London.  Breakfasts range from £1.49 for a bacon roll and cup of tea or coffee but we usually have their traditional breakfast with bacon, egg, sausage and beans.   I do love my cooked breakfasts!

Following breakfast we went for coffee at Starbucks and I bumped into Jon and Jennifer.  With 8 million people living in Greater London and who knows how many more visitors, it is so random that you could bump into anyone!!  I met Jon and Jennifer on the evening I went for the Sunset Flight on the London Eye and Jon was one of the prize winners.  It was nice to see them and they gave us a couple of tips on what to do in Greenwich.

After coffee, we went along to Greenwich Market on Jon and Jennifer’s recommendation.

Greenwich Market is one of the nicest markets I have visited in years.  The first part is a food court and the food was absolutely mouth watering!  There was food from many different corners of the world including Poland, Spain and local delicacies too.  From what I could understand, the food section is under threat and the owners of the market want to reduce the food stalls from 12 to 6 to make way for more arts and craft stalls.  You can sign a petition to save the food market.

I really enjoyed the arts and crafts section of the market.  South African markets have a very definite focus on African and ethnic items so it was lovely to see a more cottage-like or retro look in this market.  Don’t get me wrong, I love South African markets but I liked seeing all the unique items in this market.

 

Stephen saw me looking with great interest at the Steam Punk outfits above and asked if I would fit into them.  How sweet.  The man obviously has no idea of how big I really am as those dresses would not make it past my shoulders or my knees.  Still, they are rather gorgeous and I would have loved to wear something like that 15 years ago.

After the market, we took a walk through the streets of Greenwich.  I loved the look of this old sweet shop and it was next to Gourmet Burger Kitchen which I wrote about two years ago.  GBK still do the best burgers on Earth and you can often find 2-for-1 specials if you search on Google.

We bumped into the Pearly Kings and Queens of St Pancras which I thought was all very exciting as we had just seen one of the Pearly Kings on television the night before.

Only in England…

 

We walked down to the piers as we were going to take a boat ride on the Thames.  It will be quite pretty there once they have finished working on the Cutty Sark but it looks like a building site at the moment!  They do have Lewin Gate in front of the Old Royal Naval College which is a lovely little garden.  That is where  I took the photo of the monument above. The domed structure is the entrance to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel.  I had never even heard of the foot tunnel before but Jon showed me a photo of it and you can walk under the Thames and come out just in front of Canary Wharf!!  I really wanted to take the walk but my in-laws and Stephen weren’t so I shall have to do that some other time.

I shall have to tell you all about our boat ride on the Thames next time!