The British Museum

Yesterday I figured before I start working I better go to some of these museums; summer holidays or not. So I went to the British Museum. 

The place is exactly how a museum should be in your minds eye - heaps of neat stuff with information about it. Not wacky earthquake shacks and 'See if you can work a horses leg' interactive exhibits. (Looking at you Te Paps). It was quite overwhelming really, every room there'd be another ancient civilisation. I particularly liked all the stuff about ancient Iran, as I knew pretty much nothing about anything over there. The Americas was really quite interesting too!

Fuck yea! History!

The first thing I headed for was the ancient Egyptian stuff, followed by ancient Greek and Rome. The English sure knew how to pillage priceless artefacts a couple hundred years ago - though they have gone to considerable effort to justify the deeds. And I suspect it's quite right, better things were pinched and archived in England and France than potentially lost forever, sold piecemeal to tourist collectors or smelted down to make cellphones. Still, doesn't sit that well with me - should be all be being shared in some revolving international museum arrangement and owned by their respective nations. I'm sure there's a bit of that going on!

They've got this huge area dedicated to the Parthenon, and the friezes there. Slightly irritating were these awesome scenes of centaur battles, but no-one had a head. Every wee plaque said 'The head is in Athens'. I guess someone decided to put their heads together and that was the best idea, but really. Why don't they send a couple of the friezes to Athens, and Athens sends a couple of heads, so everyone's got a couple of more whole items? Must be a bit boring in Athens, 'Here's another head. The actual scene is in London.'

The history goes straight to your head

After a couple of hours it all gets a bit much - any one item in there would be the biggest deal ever back home, but there's just so much and so many civilisations, and everything has such an interesting story to tell. After being on your feet a few hours, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's heard - 'dude, go get a stuffed potato'. 

So I went out and got a stuffed potato.

After lunch I headed back and made my way around the place. There was no way I was able to soak up even half of what is in there. I did quite enjoy the great hall or whatever they called it, totally old-school. Could see how it was all set back in the day, all these curiosities from all over the globe, British explorers' loot coming in. 

One for Mum and Smelly

Looks familiar

No explanation necessary

I'll just need to go back and commit to only looking at England, or Asia, or whatever - just do the museum in bite sized chunks. It's too much and I did it a real disservice honking through like I did. 

I took the bus home though, which was actually really easy, took twice as long as the tube but it didn't feel like torture. It wasn't rancidly hot, you didn't have to avoid eye contact, and it wasn't ear-splittingly loud. Think I'll take the bus today too. There's an awesome app over here for your phone, for all your travel needs. Citymapper. Absolutely idiot-proof and brilliant!

Only a tourist would take a photo of yourself riding a bus.