We got a good night’s sleep, barely managing to make it to the hotel breakfast before the 9am close. Breakfast was plain: three kinds of cereal, a variety of juice, toast (white bread), and coffee. We only ate there once, mostly because it was an incredibly noisy way to spend the day, and we preferred to sleep later. ==> note: I actually slept past 9am every day we were there, even with going to bed at 10pm or so. Clearly, I was exhausted each day. < === The day was overcast, but warm — 65 degrees or so.

We felt like this was our first real day in London, and headed out to find the British Museum, largest repository of loot in the world. The Great Court was incredible — an exquisite merging of modern and old. We took a look at the map and decided to keep our tour focused. We’d see the Rosetta stone, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, and the Hellenes. Anything we saw that was just gravy. To my surprise, picture taking was allowed, and so we went nuts with the digital. It was hard to get good pictures in the uncertain museum light, but we managed a few. (By the end of the trip we were comfortable with changing the settings to get the best effects.) The Rosetta Stone was neat. Hordes of school children were diligently taking notes and jabbing their pencils at the glass-enclosed stone. It was smaller than I imagined.

The Assyrians were amazing. The level of detail created from their carved stone walls was exquisite. (Gory, too, what with hounds being shot with arrows and lions vomiting blood, and people being crucified.) We spent a long time enjoying the various reconstructed palace walls.  J’s comment: “The Assyrians blow the Egyptians away.”

Then we went to see the Hellenes, with the god/dess sculptures, Temple of the Nerieds, and the pieces of the Parthenon. Wow. We were especially impressed with the variety of faces carved into stone that wasn’t even really visible from the ground, and also with how well sheer draped cloth was handled. (I tried to get a good shot of a lovely foot, but the picture just came out too blurry to really enjoy.)

The Egyptian stuff was neat. Particularly the painted (still visible after all these millennia) images of the various gods. The statues of falcons (Horus) in black basalt were incredible. There was a black stone, about 2 feet across, that had hieroglyphs on it. It was damaged by, of all things, being used as a mill stone — that’s taking practicality too far!

We had a bite to eat in the museum cafe about half way through the day, and then continued our journey through the loot of the world. We wandered through the Romans for a bit — amazing pottery and metal work in cups and ornaments. One very dirty little cup was especially amusing — it depicted two couple (both men) engaged in amorous activities. Eventually, we headed out to wander the city a some more.  It was still noisy, but I was getting more accustomed to it, I think.

Everywhere we went we saw faces carved in the architecture, and old stone and slate buildings right next to modern glass and steel structures. It is an incredible juxtaposition of styles that shouldn’t work, but somehow does.  J. read somewhere that London is a city of Architecture, and I think we saw that where ever we went.

We meandered back to our hotel room, and read in the garden for awhile. We decided to find a place to eat in our neighborhood and that is how we found Casa Mamma. This is a tiny little Italian restaurant that is an absolute gem! J. had an ‘Americano’ pizza (pepperoni), and I had spaghetti with white clam sauce. Delicious. We both felt like this was one of the best meals we’d had in a while. A little more reading in the garden, and we were back to sleep by 10pm.