After lunch at the Plume of Feathers we walked back down Park Vista to Park Row and then on past the Naval College entrance to the river and there we found another pub known as the Trafalgar Tavern.
Dickens dined here.
The Trafalgar (as it is called by locals) is a very large building that includes both a pub and a separate restaurant. Same menu for both. There’s also an upper floor that can be rented out for private parties. Charles Dickens wrote in his diaries that he dined here and, indeed, people came from all over London in the 19th century to feast on their famous whitebait. Whitebait can no longer be found in the Thames today but the tavern imports another whitebait variety from other countries and still shows whitebait on their menu.
Here are some photos I took outside the Trafalgar:
The O2 and Morden Wharf at the north tip of the Greenwich peninsula. Formerly called The Millennium Dome, the O2 is used primarily for musical entertainment. The basketball finals in the 2012 Olympics were held here.
The southern tip of the Isle of Dogs to the left of the O2. Canary Wharf skyscrapers are in the background.
The Emirates Air Line, a cable car system that cost 60 million pounds, connects the Royal Docks with north Greenwich. It opened just before the 2012 Olympics and is mostly a tourist attraction even though it is run by Transport for London and accepts oyster cards. As of last week the grand total of daily commuters using the cable cars was four.
OK, I checked the website. CPBS stands for Capital Pleasure Boats and you can rent them, large or small.
Another view with this same boat in the foreground.
The Trafalgar’s riverfront facade. The chimneys on the left belong to the Greenwich Power Station.
The coaling pier for the Greenwich Power Station is no longer used because the power station now uses gas and oil. Cecil Day-Lewis, Britain’s poet laureate from 1968 to 1972, wrote murder mysteries under the pen name of Nicholas Blake. One of his books was about a murder that occurred under this pier.
It was standing room only inside the pub because of a funeral reception and it was too cold outside; so we ordered just one round (I think I had a Sharp’s Doom Bar) and then strolled across the street to begin our walk through the Old Royal Naval College, which will be the subject of my next posting.
Crow Canyon Journal 