Day 20 - The British Museum

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.