Visited: October 2017
So I moved to London, England - here's my week one adventures.
I've just moved to London, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I spent the first week in my temporary AirBnb in Whitechapel, an lovely area filled with Middle Eastern and South Asian communities, stores and restaurants.
London is the 4th biggest city in Europe by population trailing only Istanbul, Moscow and Paris (although it's so close you can call it a tie). London has a very rich history starting from AD 47 when it was founded as Londinium by the Romans.
The original walled city was only just over 1 square mile. This area is still called The City of London which is confusing sometimes depending on who you're speaking with.
The city grew for many years and especially the last 300+ as the UK became more and more powerful in the world peaking in the early 20th century before having a tough run with the World Wars and other fast growing nations (The United States and Russia for example).
Know as one of the most influential cities in the world it is very culturally diverse, filled with citizens from all over the world. It's a major financial centre, has many many museums and galleries filled with local and err.. borrowed items from all over the world! A few facts:
Just the facts please
Population of over 14M in the commuter belt
4th biggest city GDP
Most visited city in the world
Largest airport system by passenger count
Top 5 largest subway system
Most grumpiest people on rainy Tuesdays in January
Was certainly the most powerful city in the world for many years in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries.
Here are my first week notes and photos.
One is the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum. The British have a lot of great items in their museums because well let’s be honest they won a lot of battles, occupied a bunch of regions and decided to take stuff home.
The line between my shoes photo is at Greenwich Observatory.
That is the prime meridian. Where east and west longitude lines radiate from. The Greenwich observatory was used to help set and keep time with the precise (for any given period) measurement of the stars movement and hence time and date. It was also the east west divide which combined the two (time and longitude) measurements and data created allowed much better maritime navigation and helped England be a world leader in the seas.
Sailors could easily determine latitude with the Sun’s peak rise over the sky and knowing the date but they could not determine longitude without precise time measurements and knowledge of the stars locations. In fact they used charts made in the Observatory to look at the Moon and Jupiter (and its moons) to figure out time until clocks were sufficiently accurate to determine longitude.
So far I’ve seen quite a few neighbourhoods in London and will be moving to Chelsea if all goes well on Saturday. In addition to Greenwich I’ve gone to the science museum, British museum, maritime museum and aboard the fastest cutter of its time the Cutty Sark which sailed in the mid/late 1800s first from China with loads of tea then latter Australia with loads of wool. Sadly between the steam ship invention and opening of the Suez Canal (with unfavourable trade winds) the ship lost its speed advantage in the late 1880s.
Managed to get phone, bank accounts setup and next is the new place fingers crossed.
Today heading to Birmingham for a conference. 1.5 hr train ride from Euston station riding through the English countryside!
Best to all!
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