Greenwich: National Maritime Museum

Today we took a smooth ferry ride over to Greenwich to see the National Maritime Museum. I myself am not very interested in nautical anything, but I still found today very cool and informative! Within the museum is Caird Library, where we got a tour from the archivists there. It was founded by Sir James Caird, who went around buying rare books and manuscripts to open the library with. The library has a lot of the typical things I associate with a library, such as printers and study tables, but they are specialized in maritime material. They have information on a wide variety of topics within that, such as naval battles, history of the navy, ship building, exploration, medicine at sea, biographies, and family history. Since they are a smaller library, they have the ability and time to help people get started with their research projects and really set them on the pass to success--even if they themselves don't have the materials there at their library. It sounds pretty familiar of what I am used to, so I'm happy to see it might be a universal trend across my career. :)

Since they're a specialized library, they use a different classification system for their books (that I had never heard of before!). It's called the Universal Decimal Classification and it is similar to Dewey except there are lots more places after the decimal point, which is very helpful for the differentiation they need to do within topics.

Journal of Edward Barlow

The archives here were different! A lot of their material was journals of people's journeys at sea, like the one pictured above. The journal of Edward Barlow is 3 volumes long and is from the 17th century, and it is considered one of the most important maritime manuscripts. It is very detailed and Barlow saw a lot and went to lots of countries.

There were also some amazing Titanic archives there!

Pictures of the rescue

Letters from survivors about their experiences

Not going to lie, this one made me cry! Jack and Kate all over again!

After the library, I went up to the Royal Observatory which was a HIKE and a VIEW.

And up there, I put my feet in two hemispheres. Prime Meridian with style!

It was a lovely day! Let me tell you, the Monday Blues are NOT an issue in London for me.

And as promised, let me catch you up on my weekend adventures at Trooping the Colour, the Queen's Birthday parade! It was such an experience, and I got a picture of the Queen!!!!!!!!!!

Kate!

Harry and Meghan!

And yes...the Queen herself!

On Sunday I spent my time wandering around Hyde and Kensington Parks and had a breezy, relaxing day. I finished it off with the MOST amazing sticky toffee pudding ever, and I will never be the same.