I totally missed this the first time I visited London, but when my dad told me that he wanted to visit the Greenwich Royal Observatory and see the prime meridian, I started to look at what else was in the area. That’s when I found out about the Cutty Sark. It’s the last surviving tea clipper and as a tea fan (and having read about tea clippers in a few histories of tea), I immediately decided that we would be visiting the Cutty Sark.

The Cutty Sark is less than five minutes from the Greenwich Rail Station and easily found. We got our tickets – the Day Explorer since we were going to the Meridian Line as well – and entered. We started in the lower hold, where the tea was stored.

The lower deck was made to look like when tea was packed inside. Look at the floor!

Since tea played such an important role in the history of the Cutty Sark, this deck included a quick history of tea, including a timeline. It’s not comprehensive but it was a pretty nice introduction to the whole thing. They also introduced the history of the Cutty Sark; did you know that the despite a devastating fire occurring during the restoration of the Cutty Sark, 90% of the boat still uses the original materials? I found an article that goes into further depth if you’re interested, but the exhibition here presents it in a much more engaging manner.

The next level is the ‘Tween deck and it has more information on the Cutty Sark’s history. There are a few games/interactive exhibits here, like the one where you can try to navigate the ship.

The final deck is the Main Deck:

The main deck is where most of the information on the crew is, since this is where they stayed, and it was pretty interesting to look at their living quarters. It’s got great views too!

You’ll end by going back all the way down to look at the hull of the ship. There’s a cafe there, which also serves afternoon tea, but I didn’t get to try it because we were rushing to get to the Meridian Line before it closed.

I really enjoyed this visit to the Cutty Sark. While I can’t speak for my family (who seemed to enjoy it, for what it’s worth), I thought it was really cool to visit one of the ships that I’ve read about many times while reading up on the history of tea. The fact that most of the ship is of the original wood made it even better – it’s history come to life. It didn’t take very long for us to tour the whole thing, probably about one and a half hours, so you can easily fit this in with the other attractions in Greenwich.