A Tourist in London

Yesterday was the first day we tagged along with my little bro and his gf on their travels around London in their attempt to see pretty much everything.

The first place we visited was the British Museum, which currently has a Australian landscape set in its front court. The kids especially enjoyed the Asian exhibit, and J and I hadn't seen it either so it was new for all of us.



We took a quick taxi ride to the National Gallery with a very amusing driver. He asked where we were from and I explained to him that we lived in London and our guests were visiting us from LA. He then informed me that he watched Real Housewives of Orange County and Jersey Shore quite regularly. We all groaned in unison, and we had a good chuckle over our American reality TV embarrassments. But I had a chance to tease him in turn for The Only Way is Essex and Made in Chelsea and Geordie Shore - trust me, you don't want to know. It's true what they say about London taxi drivers - they're the best in the world.

I was amazed when we arrived at Trafalgar Square - it was packed! I had never seen the square so full of people, and we quickly beat a hasty retreat into the National Gallery where we wandered about for an hour.


Our next destination was Covent Garden, where we caught a quick street performance and wandered in the Apple Market for a while.


We then headed to Jamie's Italian for a quick dinner. The food was great and well priced - you haven't had pasta until you've had homemade pasta! We had a selection of desserts - walnut and espresso tart, tiramisu and a chocolate brownie. The tiramisu beat all, hands down. I'm proud to say that I picked it. =)

Full of delicious food, we then took another taxi to the Lyceum Theatre for an evening showing of The Lion King. The theatre was absolutely beautiful and the seats very comfortable, and I had heard excellent word-of-mouth about the show so we were quite excited. The production was absolutely amazing, probably the best I had ever seen, but the singing was a bit sub-par. Although the singing was a bit disappointing, the production and some of the actors were fantastic enough to make up for it.

We were pretty tired by the end of the night, and we headed home. I'd forgotten how exhausting it can be to be a tourist in London. All of the museums have so much to look at, and navigating London streets can get a bit confusing. I was really really glad to see my front door that night.

The British Museum

I've been a bit sick for a while now, and today was the first day in a while that I felt anything like my regular self. I did manage a long walk around Primrose Hill yesterday, but I came back feeling clammy and feverish. But after a good night's rest, I felt up for a visit to the British Museum since it seemed like a shame to spend such a beautiful day in our flat. And I just got a new digital SLR that I've been dying to try out. The space itself was absolutely stunning.







Probably the most famous item belonging to the British Museum is the Rosetta Stone. There certainly was a large crowd around the case, but we managed to get a pretty good glimpse of the three different languages inscribed upon it: hieroglyphs, Egyptian demotic script, and ancient Greek.




But my far and away favorite was all the Egyptian artifacts and mummies:













My other favorite was the Mildenhall treasure because I had read about its discovery many many years ago when I was a child, and I never thought I'd actually ever see the treasure in person. If you're curious, Roald Dahl wrote an excellent story about the treasure.





And of course the museum had a million other beautiful things to be amazed by. Literally.





 

Oh, and thanks to my older brother for telling me how to link photos from Flickr to avoid the horrible compression that occurs when you upload to Blogger!