Well I think we picked the hottest day of the
year to head into London, everyone is on pins and needles waiting for the arrival
of the Kate and Williams’s first child but we are heading into the city to go
to the British Museum. It is about an
hour long journey via commuter train and tube to anywhere in London, but it is
comfortable, reliable and a heck of a lot easier than trying to drive! What struck me were the escalators, to get
down to the Picadilly line you ride two of the longest, steepest escalators I
have ever been on, easily 7 or 8 stories down each. It gives you an idea how deep and complex the
system really is. I can honestly say
that London is as confusing as Paris, the streets are laid out to follow the
land, they go every which way, pedestrians often don’t watch the signals or
even the traffic as they talk on cell phones and weave their way amongst cars
and the abundance of road signs that seem to tell you to do conflicting things
does not help.
Well, there really are not enough superlatives
for the British Museum so her goes it is -
Superbafantasticachockablockfullofwonderment – how about that for a new
word! It really represents a couple of
centuries of collecting restoring and protecting artifacts from around the
world. From massive Egyptian, Assyrian
and Iraqi stone statues and wall plaques to gold, silver and electrum hordes
the Museum is about a hundred rooms, each absolutely crammed with old and
precious stuff. We spent about five
hours, breezed through about a quarter of it and probably actually looked at
one percent. The collection of time
pieces was incredible (dating back over five hundred years), we then started in
on the top ten and managed just a few:
the Easter Island ancestral figure, the Rosetta stone, The Standard of
Ur, the Lewis Chessmen and the Portland Vase from Greece which inspired all the
traditional Wedgewood Jasperware. As you can see, a
bit of a whirlwind tour, but then it was into our scheduled visit of the Pompeii
collection, a series of artifacts from Pompeii and Herculaneum the detailed
everyday life for the rich and the poor – fascinating particularly we had
visited Herculaneum several years before and seen the buildings and mosaics but
of course there were no artifacts, they had all been removed to museums. Much of what there detailed life in Pompeii,
however many of the items on display were from Herculaneum as it was flash
buried under 24 meters of ash and literally frozen in time. Well, a stupendous exhibit but after that we
were done and had to head back to Glen Iris.
Onto the tube, a commute with the business crowd and a cold Gin and
Tonic – great day! Tomorrow is our last
kick at London and we intend to do some of the touristy stuff starting with the
Eye.
Up and out early today to catch the 9:30 commute
into London to take a spin around The Eye.
It threatened rain all day but we were lucky and happened to be inside
for all the showers. In case you didn’t
know, the Eye is a giant Ferris wheel – 135 meters tall on the south bank of
the River Thames. It is right across the
river from the department of Defense, Big Ben and the Parliament buildings and
has a great view of London. The whole
ride takes about half an hour and it moves so slow you don’t even realize you
are moving. The view is 360 degrees and
the pods are not overcrowded so you can see and photograph in every direction. The Eye was built in 1999 for the Millennium
celebrations and was meant to be temporary but has become such a financial
success that it is still running. The
only downside is the queuing up for about 45 minutes to get on, but the view is
worth it. We even got to watch the
changing of the guard from our pod.
We
spent the afternoon wandering – Trafalgar square to visit the Nelson and climb
the giant Brass lions, past Canada House,
up Haymarket street for some shopping, on to Piccadilly Circus and the Eros
statue, then window shopping along the toney Bond street. We also had to shop in the most awesome British tourist trap on Picadilly Circus, dragged in by the two charming Londoners you see below.! Footsore and with bruised wallets we headed home to Glen Iris where the wine flowed and the food was as always wonderful. Tomorrow home to Toronto and a sleep in our own beds!
