A very full day, and my little brain has suffered sensory overload. We went to the British Museum, which is just around the corner from the hotel. In fact, we can look out the window to see the back of the museum. We spent the entire day there from 10-5, and covered a lot of area. The British Museum is a huge place, filled with the plunder of countless British explorers, who literally took everything they could get their hands on and brought it all back to Britain. Millions of objects. We saw Chinese jade, the Rosetta stone, Indian buddhas, Assyrian tablets, walls, friezes,and huge statues. Greek vases by the hundreds, statues, jewelery, etc., etc. We only saw a portion of the stuff, and finally we pooped out. Went to get a pint of ale and talked with a nice local man who lived round the corner from the pub. Then we came back to drop our stuff, went out walking again and ate dinner at a place called Tas; Arabic/middle eastern. Tabouli, hummus, lamb....
Back in the hotel planning our trip for tomorrow,
I was struck at all the foreigners I saw in the museum--Japanese, German, polish. Then, it occurred to me that, of course that's who was at the museum! All the English were at work, and this was where tourists go. I was also aware that I didn't see very many fat people. Most were average sized. Not a lot of extremely tall people, either.
So we leave London tomorrow and we haven't done quite what we originally planned..no tour bus, no Natural History museum. But that's ok. Things are just taking more time than we thought. We plan to leave extra early tomorrow and take a cab to Victoria Station because trying to schlepp our suitcases on the tube again is not a good idea. Jim's back is still hurting and I just can't imagine doing this during rush hour.
So, off to bed and dreams of masses of antiquities will float in my head, I'm sure
