Adventures in London: Day 14

Thursday was a much better day than Wednesday. My first class went out to Greenwich to see the Royal Observatory. When we got there our teacher went over the history of the place with us, which I already knew because I came here with my Stately Homes class last week. He took us to see the Painted Chapel, which I had also already seen, and the Painted Hall, which is where the naval soldiers would go when they retired if they didn’t have anywhere else to go. Well, it was their dining hall, not the living quarters, but that’s what this whole compound had been for a while. From there we walked up past the Queen’s House to the Royal Observatory. It’s up a huge hill a little ways behind the Queen’s House. We saw the meridian line that separates the Eastern and Western hemispheres. I can now say I’ve stood in two hemispheres at once! Not many people can say that, that’s for sure. But basically all there was to class was learning a little bit about the area and going to the observatory. A few of us wandered around the museum that’s in the observatory. I learned about the development of Greenwich Mean Time, and from that the 24 standard world time zones that were developed so that the world would have the same time. I never really thought about the fact that time wouldn’t be the same, other than the use of the sun and all that, but that isn’t exactly accurate. It wasn’t even standardized until the 1800s, I think. A surprisingly late date, anyways.

The painted hall.

The view of the Queen's House from the observatory.

After class we had to traverse London yet again to get all the way over to Isleworth by 2 pm. We took three different tube lines, a bus, and our teacher had to ferry us in two groups of three in her car to get there, and it literally took 2 full hours. But oh my gosh, it was worth it. Syon House is the house we toured. It’s the ancestral home of the Dukes of Northumberland. It was incredible. Many of the rooms hold their original contents, so stuff from centuries ago. It even had that old smell to it. So as we went in our teacher decided that she wanted us to walk her through the rooms today, describing to her what we saw and how it fit in with the design of the building, what each element meant, and finally figuring out the function and purpose of each room. We did a pretty good job, and it was really cool to just wander a room and have everyone adding things they see and what they think they’re for. Like, in the dining room, how the room is elongated to fit a long table, and there are discreet servants entrances on either side of the room partitioned off my columns, giving the room the appearance of two separate rooms. It was all very interesting. I was absolutely enthralled with Syon House. This is the reason I took this class! To see homes like that. So we wandered the house until about 4:15, and then we walked out to the great conservatory, which is a very interesting structure. One side of it has food plants growing, while the other side has just flowering plants growing. On the far left end there’s a beautiful lily pond, and on the far right there’re a bunch of exotic cactuses growing. Then behind the conservatory are more beautiful gardens. I saw some huge rhododendron trees and it made me think of home. There’s also a lake back there and you can walk a little ways to the Thames River. During the summer the house sells tickets for just “glass house” entrance, which means people can come and lounge by the river all day. It’s pretty safe considering the grounds are completely closed. So we all managed to make it back to where our teacher was by 4:30, except one girl who took 15 more minutes. This was very annoying, considering she’s always complaining about how class doesn’t get out on time ever. So thanks to her I didn’t manage to get home until 6:30, two full hours after class was over. It’s a good thing I have good books to read or else I would not be okay with that.