Oct 22 Monday - British Museum

Monday, Oct 22nd

We decided on the British Museum for our day's adventure, and after having breakfast at the apartment walked the two blocks to the train station to buy an "Oyster" card, a discounted travel pass good for buses and trains throughout London. We boarded the number 19 bus, one of the ubiquitous double deckers, that took us right to the museum. As we left well after rush hour, we had most of the bus to ourselves for the first several stops. Philip immediately ran upstairs for the great views it afforded. It was a fun ride.

The Museum is overwhelming in scope, and we decided to start with ancient Greece as that is Philip's heritage through his father. To get to the Greek rooms we passed through ancient Egypt with an amazing statue of Ramses II gazing down with a watchful eye on all those passing beneath. We rented personal multi-media players that provided commentary as well as video support throughout the museum on hundreds of exhibited elements. A real step up from the typical audio players we're all used to.

I don't know about you, but there is only so much a person can take of a museum, even one as bountiful as the British. Two hours of wandering through was about all we could take. We found the restaurant on the third floor at 12:30pm and had an unexpected excellent meal. I had artic char, Donna had broiled sardines (really good), and Philip had spaghetti with tomato sauce. He ended up eating half my artic char as well.  For dessert he had an adult sized portion of chocolate pie with a large scoop of salted caramel ice cream. I could hardly believe he consumed the entire thing. I know it was good, but based solely on a few crumbs he missed.

At lunch we read that the Rosetta Stone was in the museum and began a quest to find it. Seems we walked right past it when we first entered the very first room (Ancient Egypt) on our way to Ancient Greece.  While the room was empty in the morning, there was such a crowd around the Rosetta Stone we could hardly see it.  I gave Philip my camera and sent him to push his way to the front to take a picture. He did a great job as I hope you will agree. It is an amazing artifact with such clearly defined writing, it is difficult to believe it was created so many thousands of years ago.

We decided to leave immediately after that, about 2:45pm. We had hoped to see Westminster Abbey on the way back, but we were all very tired, and the Abbey closes for tours at 3:30pm. We hopped on the number 19 for the ride back on a totally empty bus for the first few stops. We saw the theater showing Singin' in the Rain and decided that we should see if we could get tickets for it before we left London.

We got off the bus in Chelsea, a few stops before Sloane Square, to walk past the couture stores. If I were to live in London, this is certainly where I would want to be. Unfortunately, a two bedroom, two bath apartment costs about 1.3 million pounds sterling based on the posings we saw in several real estate office windows.

Carolyn made it back from work at 5:15pm and we had dinner together at a local pizza restaurant. Carolyn and I shared a goat cheese and carmelized onion Rome style pizza and a salade Nicoise.  Not the best pizza I've ever had (that disticntion goes to the one I had in Rome back in May), but really good.

Stopping for gelato and a little grocery shopping on the walk home (Vasilis suprised us by showing up from work at the grocery store), we ended our day planning on what we would do tomorrow. It;s only a day away.