I love being in London for the weekends - I can catch up with myself slightly, and even had time to do the blog last night and get to bed in plenty of time to have a proper sleep. Which I did! Praise be, that cold seems to be on its way out. Anyway, I woke in time to have breakfast, and set off in decent time to the British Museum, in order to get there by 2pm. Unfortunately, I hadn't counted on the queue for the bag check.. as I joined the end of the long queue, I could see a guy standing on the steps with an orange umbrella, whom I thought might be the guide. "Orange umbrella" had been mentioned in the instructions email. So I texted him to let him know I was in the queue, and finally came out the other side of bag check just after 2. They were quite quick with the actual check, but of course I should have expected a bigger queue on a Saturday!
Yes, that was him, unnervingly standing all alone - but it turned out that another couple had beaten me to it, and were currently investigating the toilet facilities. And we were waiting on another few. While we waited, we had an interesting chat about the museum.. and in due course, the others showed up: one guy who'd been in the bag queue a bit after I had, and a couple of Spanish girls, who'd ended up in completely the wrong place, apparently! I'm glad they didn't miss it.
Of course, and as I said to him afterwards, we couldn't possibly cover the whole place in a couple of hours. However, this was a fantastic taster. We started with Assyrian reliefs, then moved on to the Egyptian gallery, which I'd love to come back to - and of course, it'd be easy for me, within walking distance.. and it's free!
More photos here. As we went, our knowledgeable guide explained to us the progress of human civilisation, and we got to see the Rosetta Stone. How could I have been here before and missed it!
The fact that it wasn't until 1822 that the hieroglyphics were decoded with reasonable confidence explains the explosion of interest in Egyptology in the 19th century. Our next gallery was the Parthenon gallery, in which our guide brought up the subject of whether the "Elgin marbles", appropriated by Lord Elgin from the Parthenon in the early 1800s, should be returned to Greece. As our guide explained, one of the museum's stated reasons for hanging onto them was that you could literally trace the entire history of the world, walking from gallery to gallery here. That, I can testify to.
One of the most amazing things we saw was a small sculpture of a couple having sex. What was amazing about it wasn't so much its execution, as its age.. the thing is apparently 11,000 years old! (Yes, Homo Sapiens were around then - and naturally preoccupied with sex, I guess!) Neolithic period, I believe.
Another highlight was our trip to the Aztec room, with its creepy masks and sculptures - oh, and a sacrificial knife!
We continued to the room focusing on the Age of Enlightenment, which, as our guide said, was one of the most interesting rooms, because it contained stuff from so many different fields of study. And finishing by an Easter Island statue, we gave him a discreet, and well-earned, round of applause. He was headed to the pub after, but since nobody else seemed inclined, I didn't fancy going either.
Terrific tour, terrific way to get your head around this enormous place with all its wonders. He focused on the ancient world because, as he said, many of the other galleries were closed for renovations. Apparently he runs his own company, but I didn't catch the name - still, you can book on the above Funzing link. This is a new walk, apparently, and scheduled for plenty of dates! Highly recommended.
I grabbed a hot chocolate in the museum cafe after - mainly to rest my aching legs and feet, but the chocolate proved most satisfactory too. He had offered a break in the middle of the tour, but we passed, which was fine - but I was glad to get home finally and put my feet up!
I'm quite excited about tomorrow. I was considering going to a film.. which meant redoing the film list.. and just got it finished yesterday. Imagine my glee to see a horror film on top! I do believe that's the very first time that horror has come top of an unrestricted list of London showings. Twenty Twenty-Four is only showing tomorrow - and in the Vaults, yet! What a great location. Unfortunately, having decided to go see it - which took about one second after the list was done - it then took me 20 minutes to book it! I swear, I could not find a link - which was worrying, as the above site said tickets had to be booked in advance. But their booking link doesn't work, their advertised phone number links to the wrong company, the other phone number I found for them isn't monitored, they say to book via Time Out, but Time Out provides no links at all for them.. I was despairing by the time I found the link for the Vault Festival, which is the one you need. Honestly, do they really not need to advertise better? Anyway, there's a shorts programme too, and since there was a discount if you booked both, I did.
On Monday, I'm back with the Crick Crack Club - Love in the Shadows is in Soho Theatre, and, as usual for these events, already sold out.
On Tuesday, the Man is wearing his Hat again - Let's Do London - for less! is off to see Phantom of the Opera. Only 11 tickets, snapped up at once, of course - and hard to believe he's never seen it! Wonder whether anyone else who's going from the group has, apart from me..!
On Wednesday, I'm actually flying back to Ireland, because I'm going with my mother on Thursday to a Colm Wilkinson concert at UCH Limerick. Staying for the weekend, as it would be my weekend in Ireland anyway.
And on the following Monday, I got a cheap ticket to a comedy show - Alasdair King is performing at the Pleasance Theatre.
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