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Monday in London, with sore feet
Oct. 9th, 2006 09:36 pmThe hotel shuttle to the station wasn't ready when we got down to the lobby this morning, so we walked over to Brent Cross Shopping Centre, bought some breakfast and hit the ATM... then caught the bus to the station from there. Down to Tottenham Court Road Station and a short walk over to the British Museum, where we stayed from about half an hour after they opened until they closed. What a day! I swear, it feels like my feet are about to fall off, and I managed to acquire a few blisters for the first time since we got here (I'm actually a little surprised it's taken this long). We're nowhere near close to having seen everything we wanted to see, but I think we're about done with London sightseeing... I just don't know how much more we'd be able to handle without a bit of a break.
The British Museum, btw, is incredible. Way, way, WAY too much too see... but we made a valiant attempt at it. The first thing we saw was the very thing I'd most wanted to see... along with, apparently, everyone else: the Rosetta Stone. I snapped a few shots of it through the crowd, but I'm not sure how they turned out. The Egyptian Exhibit absolutely blew me away. I love that so many of the displays are just out in the open... people were even doing rubbings of the engravings on some of the stones. It was so neat being able to see that stuff without the glare of glass in front of it!
Right now, they've got a special display on the history of money that was pretty cool... We happened to be there during one of the times they had a coin expert on hand, so we were able to hear some interesting stories about a few of the coins they had on display, and even got to handle a few. I'm beginning to think I need to find a good book or two on British history, because it's turning out there are a whole lot of things I never knew. For some reason, I had no clue there'd been a civil war here... or maybe I knew some of the particulars but had simply never put them together before. Anyway, we got to hold a piece of siege money... square metal coins that were minted when the king didn't have access to the standard mints. It's all just so neat!
We had lunch at the Gallery Cafe (which is in the Museum, but a bit out of the way). Good food (I had the Irish Stew) and good prices... plus we got to eat lunch sitting next to a plaster casting from the Parthenon. Then it was off to do more exploring... The reading room is incredible, and I snapped a few photos before![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rackham pointed out the sign saying no photography. Oops. But in my defense, it's in small print on another sign located quite a ways from the door -- I actually have to wonder if they meant no photos of the room, or just no photos of the books once you go into the library area... since no one said anything to me, or any of the other people standing around with cameras. I think, in the end, we saw about half the museum, though we did do a quick glance through some of the sections we were missing. Ah well, more to do next time!
After that we hopped the underground out to Knightsbridge and dropped by Harrod's (since I believe there's some sort of law stating you can't visit London for the first time without going there). We wandered around a bit, enjoying the really expensive sights and the Christmas displays... I drooled over the Doctor Who toys (but decided they were things I could probably pick up online from home for cheaper) and we ended up having dinner at the Sea Bar (I got the Dover Sole, since I remembered Alton Brown raving about the stuff and saying how hard it was to find in the US) and then headed up to the Chocolate Bar for the most incredible hot fudge sundae (with dark, milk and white chocolate ice cream). And then back to the hotel for the night with our incredibly sore feet.
Tomorrow the plan is to leave early and get to Hampton Court when it opens so we'll hopefully have enough time to see most of it before we need to head out to Heathrow to pick up the rental car (and getting that back to the hotel should be interesting). Also at some point tomorrow, we're definitely going to make it to the London Eye... it's the one thing we've got left that we absolutely HAVE to do.
The British Museum, btw, is incredible. Way, way, WAY too much too see... but we made a valiant attempt at it. The first thing we saw was the very thing I'd most wanted to see... along with, apparently, everyone else: the Rosetta Stone. I snapped a few shots of it through the crowd, but I'm not sure how they turned out. The Egyptian Exhibit absolutely blew me away. I love that so many of the displays are just out in the open... people were even doing rubbings of the engravings on some of the stones. It was so neat being able to see that stuff without the glare of glass in front of it!
Right now, they've got a special display on the history of money that was pretty cool... We happened to be there during one of the times they had a coin expert on hand, so we were able to hear some interesting stories about a few of the coins they had on display, and even got to handle a few. I'm beginning to think I need to find a good book or two on British history, because it's turning out there are a whole lot of things I never knew. For some reason, I had no clue there'd been a civil war here... or maybe I knew some of the particulars but had simply never put them together before. Anyway, we got to hold a piece of siege money... square metal coins that were minted when the king didn't have access to the standard mints. It's all just so neat!
We had lunch at the Gallery Cafe (which is in the Museum, but a bit out of the way). Good food (I had the Irish Stew) and good prices... plus we got to eat lunch sitting next to a plaster casting from the Parthenon. Then it was off to do more exploring... The reading room is incredible, and I snapped a few photos before
rackham pointed out the sign saying no photography. Oops. But in my defense, it's in small print on another sign located quite a ways from the door -- I actually have to wonder if they meant no photos of the room, or just no photos of the books once you go into the library area... since no one said anything to me, or any of the other people standing around with cameras. I think, in the end, we saw about half the museum, though we did do a quick glance through some of the sections we were missing. Ah well, more to do next time!After that we hopped the underground out to Knightsbridge and dropped by Harrod's (since I believe there's some sort of law stating you can't visit London for the first time without going there). We wandered around a bit, enjoying the really expensive sights and the Christmas displays... I drooled over the Doctor Who toys (but decided they were things I could probably pick up online from home for cheaper) and we ended up having dinner at the Sea Bar (I got the Dover Sole, since I remembered Alton Brown raving about the stuff and saying how hard it was to find in the US) and then headed up to the Chocolate Bar for the most incredible hot fudge sundae (with dark, milk and white chocolate ice cream). And then back to the hotel for the night with our incredibly sore feet.
Tomorrow the plan is to leave early and get to Hampton Court when it opens so we'll hopefully have enough time to see most of it before we need to head out to Heathrow to pick up the rental car (and getting that back to the hotel should be interesting). Also at some point tomorrow, we're definitely going to make it to the London Eye... it's the one thing we've got left that we absolutely HAVE to do.
