I am getting weirdly used to 5:00 wake-up calls. I drove to the airport and arrived at the long-stay parking lot just before 6:00, with the exact time to catch the bus at the nearest stop. I might be getting too comfortable with timings – either that, or the flights have started taking off a bit later, because I remember having to leave by 3:45 for the first Ryanair flight a few years back. Anyway, security was nice and smooth, but passport control was maddeningly slow – the shiny brand-new machines the airport has spent a fortune on were not working, and there were only two agents, and three flights leaving around the same time.

We left on time and landed on time too, and since works at London Stansted have been finished, I was fast out of immigration. I considered going to the hotel first thing in the morning in order to make sure the credit card went through – and have time to find an exchange office if it did not. When I was able to buy my usual breakfast in the Costa at the arrival area without an issue, I decided I should be all right. Thus, I just headed off towards the centre, reached Liverpool Street station, and transferred to the TfL system. I got a bit confused at the DLR. London’s railway is divided in the Underground, the Overground and the Docklands Light Railway or DLR, which are mostly automatic trains which involve more transfers than I had expected. I needed to backtrack a station or two before I got to my final destination, the area know as Isle of Dogs in the borough of Tower Hamlets. I’ve recently found out that there is a footpath under River Thames which connects the Isle of Dogs with Greenwich. The footpath, the Greenwich foot tunnel, was built from 1899 onwards, and it opened in 1902. You can literally walk from one bank of the Thames to the other in just a few minutes!

The tunnel was damaged during World War II, and there is a section which is held together by an inner steel lining. The whole tunnel is lit and either painted or tiled in white, so it does not give off any kind of claustrophobic feeling. Something cool that happened to me was that I could actually feel the water running above me, similarly to how I feel when I’m standing on a bridge and look at the river underneath. That was unexpected. Though there are lifts – the original ones were installed in 1904, but there are new ones from 2012 – I took the stairs.

I stepped out of the tunnel and into Greenwich, next to the Cutty Sark. I have already visited the museum inside the ship. This time around, I was going to try to see the Old Royal Naval College, which has been closed whenever I’ve tried to see it – they film rather often there. This time it was actually open to visitors.

The Old Royal Naval College, today part of the Maritime Greenwich UNESCO World Heritage Site, was originally designed as a veteran home and hospital. The current iteration of the building was designed by Christopher Wren – also responsible for St Paul’s Cathedral. The complex has two complexes or courts, Queen Mary Court on the left from the river, King William Court on the right. William III (reigned 1689 – 1702) and Mary II (reigned 1689 – 1694) were offered the throne as joint monarchs when their predecessor James VII and II was declared unfit because he became a Catholic. The building served as hospital and hospice until 1869; later, in 1873 it became a training academy for the Royal Nay until 1998.

I first went into the Chapel of St Peter & St Paul in Queen Mary Court. It was reconstructed after a fire by James ‘Athenian’ Stuart in the neoclassical style. It has one nave, and a wood ceiling decorated with naval themes. The altar piece was painted by Benjamin West. I found the chapel quite beautiful, it gave off a warm feeling. The security personnel were also very nice.

Then, I headed off to King William Court, to the pièce de résistance of the building. The Painted Hall is a huge ward decorated with Baroque paintings by Sir James Thornhill. The ceiling and walls are painted to honour the kings and queens who gave their patronage to the “Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich”, depicting them surrounded by mythological and allegoric figures. The art was impressive, and the volunteer who explained it was a former teacher who made the whole tour really informative. While I usually avoid guided visits as much as I can, I found the painting too complex to interpret on my own.

I backtracked through the Greenwich foot tunnel and took the Underground towards the Victoria & Albert Museum. Last time I was over they were running an exhibition I wanted to see… only this time around they had moved to another of their sites. I shrugged it off and decided to have a scone instead – any scone. I mention this because the couple before me wanted two particular scones from the basket. Afterwards, I went to see a gallery within the museum which I missed in 2023, which turned out to have bronze sculptures by French artist Auguste Rodin, considered the initiator of modern sculpture.

After that, I hopped back onto the Underground and headed off towards the Royal Academy of Arts, located in Burlington House. I was… surprised, to say the least, about the current display in the courtyard, but I was there to see oldest surviving red telephone box – Sir Giles Gilbert-Scott’s original prototype “K2” kiosk, made in wood in 1924.

I then snooped around three of the high-class shopping centres along the Oxford Street area, all of them out of my price range, of course – Burlington Arcade, Piccadilly Arcade and Quadrant Arcade. I walked past Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, and headed off to Forbidden Planet to check out if they by any chance had a copy of a comic I’ve been looking for (Alligator Loki, if you ever find it, give me a shout?). I did not find the comic but I did see some stuff by Stjepan Šejić in the wild.

Finally, I headed off towards the hotel / venue area, I found the venue – just outside the station. I bought some snacks for dinner and breakfast, then headed off to get to my hotel. The credit card thankfully went through and I got my room. I spent the rest of the evening watching films and snacking on salt and vinegar crisps. Truth be told, the weather was not that nice, but most of the rain happened when I was inside the buildings in the Old Royal Navy College. It’s been a long time since I was in London and there was not a heat wave, so I am not going to complain.