Day One-Houses of Parliment

From the British Museum, I wandered down to Waterloo Bridge (getting lost several times since I didn’t want to pull out my fold out map unless I had to) and crossed over the Thames and followed the South bank to the London Eye (the largest Ferris wheel in Europe?). 

 

While walking along the river, I passed through a lot of Paralympic street festival events.  

Paralympic Volunteers

Like the fabled catfish of a certain Southern city, all around London were variously themed statues of its two Olympic mascots, Wenlock and Mandeville.  Some of these were kind of creepy, while some were kind of cute, it depended on the particular statue. 

Wenlock on the Thames

Big Ben Wenlock

When I reached the London Eye, I decided not to ride it as figured to see the city myself and not just from a distance in the air. 

London Eye

So I crossed over Westminster Bridge to the House of Parliament.  Took what I hope are some nice pictures of Big Ben (apparently recently renamed by some enterprising parliamentarian to the Elizabeth Tower). 

 

There were a lot of armed guards standing at the gates.  Not the royal ones in the red coats and black fur helmets, but the working ones that look like you see in all the movies.  Dark flack jackets over white collared shirts with blue tabs, bobby helmets, submachine guns.  But they were awfully nice to tourist.  The stone work on the Houses of Parliment is simply amazing. 

Queen's Entrance to Parliament

Cromwell statue celebrating Parliament's win over the Crown

 I tried my best to capture it, really wish I had the courage to bring AM’s nice camera (don’t know how it could have possibly fit in my bag).  Wandered into the small park adjacent to take a few more pictures, and then across the street to Westminster Abbey.  At this time, the abbey was closed for evensong, so I just took pictures from the outside. '

Westminster Abbey

By now I was getting pretty tired.  (Museum/poster standing like in conferences just absolutely kills my hip.  It goes pretty numb by about 30 minutes and then alternates between pain and numbness.)  I continued to  meander without consulting the map (but consulting road signs) until I reached Buckingham Palace. 

Buckingham Palace

 I was a bit disappointed to find that you could not approach the guards directly (to try to blow their famous reserve) as they are set well behind the courtyard fence.  (I think you can approach the guards at St. James Palace more directly, but never got there.)

 

They don’t carry the old bayonet rifle I imagined, but what look like M16 type rifles with an wide bayonet.  At the time I reach the palace, it was well after closing time for tours (I never did make this tour.) 

 

The barbed wire (more like tank cable) on the walls surrounding the Palace was pretty impressive.

 I was getting pretty tired, so I walked over to Hyde Park Corner (passed the Wellington Arch that figured so prominently in the cycling race and triathlon) and got the tube for home.  

 After stopping to drop off my backpack and camera, I decided to head across the street to eat.

I ordered fish and chips, just for an authentic British experiences.  When the waitress asked if I wanted garlic bread, I thought she meant as the customary complimentary bread appetizer served in most American restaurants.  Instead, it was an extra L4 (~$6) for what was essentially pita bread with some garlic on top.  Tasty enough to be sure, but the take home message for me was that everything in a London comes at a high cost (except the museums, which are free although donations highly favored).  Even a plastic shopping bag was 50 pence (I have no idea if that is half a pound or some other unit of measure.) I also asked for an orange juice and got a orange soft drink instead.  Interesting.  At a later sandwich shop, I got real orange juice, so I am not sure if the waitress just didn’t understand me or what.  Anyway, dinner ended day one.

London Day One-British Museum

Landed at Heathrow and then took the Tube (Mind the Gap, please!) into Central London.  I got off at the South Kensington station.  This turned out to be a mistake, and I was a little disoriented for awhile because I knew my hotel was suppose to be right near the Tube station, but when I looked at the address the numbers were nowhere close.  So I went wheeling my heavy luggage for a very long walk and while I got to see the beautiful architecture of the Natural History Museum, I started to get a bit worried that I was completely lost.  After walking past Baden Powell’s statue, I finally reached my hotel and then I realized that I should have gotten off at the Gloucester Road station, rather than South Kensington (which was the station for the conference site)  Oh well…

...After practicing my talk (which I had to give the next day and I hadn’t really had time to work on much with all that needed doing before I left) and falling accidentally falling asleep for about 10 minutes, I tried to get oriented to the city via internet, only to find that my hotel wireless was next to useless.  Not wanting to waste any more time, I just used the foldout map that a nice London 2012 (Olympics/Paralympics) lady had handed me in the airport.  Not very convenient, but it did have everything I needed.  (Later on, I had a nice travel book with maps that was part of the conference packet.  That was the best thing to use.)  

 So by now its about 3 pm and I am ready for a” little” tour of the city.  My brother had suggested I use the Tube to get up to the British Museum, and I am glad that I took his suggestion.  I strongly recommend using the tube to cover ground to the outermost destination and walking between nearby points back towards the hotel.  (And if one gets too tired, just hopping the nearest tube and getting back.)

The British Museum. 

I think my overwhelming reaction to the British Museum is that at its heyday, the British Empire clearly had collected much of the treasures of the ancient world.  I am sure that when they were taken from their original sites, it was not thought of so much as plunder but as bringing the ancient world back to the modern for study.  Still, one can’t help but feel a bit like the British Empire was intentionally cannabilizing all the worlds former greater empires to increase its own sense of destiny and power. 


The one and only Rosetta stone.

 (glad I recently read Breaking the Mayan Code, it gives some nice insight to why Egyptian was cracked earlier than Mayan.)
Speaking of Mayan codices and stellas, guess who managed to collect/plunder some of the major ones....

Back to Egyptian plunder...

 

But lest you think it was only Egypt that was plundered, be assured that ancient Greece was as well...

 Whether shocking in terms of the sheer size of plunder or amazing in terms of seeing (and sometimes touching) these ancient artifacts, one has to be impressed.

One of the more interesting displays to me was the Lion hunt murals from Assyria.  This was this a massive wall displaying the prowess of the Assyrian king at killing lions released in the arena.

There was also a small display of the theaters tokens used for Shakespeare's Globe Theater.  Apparently, by the end, Shakes was one of the wealthiest men in London. Stopped by the reconstructed Globe Theatre later on in my trip.

One of the themes in the British Museum was the History of the World in 100 artifacts, which again given the extent of plunder of the treasures of the ancient world was not really much of an exaggeration.

Moving toward more modern collections, there was a nice display about the London 2012 Olympics, and the making of the design and actual pressing of the Olympic and Paralympic medals. Much to my surprise, it turns out that the gold, silver, and bronze were all mined from the Kennecott Copper Mine in Salt Lake (yes, the ugly slag heap that is the major eyesore of the Salt Lake Valley.)  So there is a Utah connection to the London Games.  (I wondered if M.R. should have considered this  before inserting his foot into his mouth about the Games, but that is a different story...)