The British Museum is the ultimate oxymoron. There is nothing British in it. The entire building is a testament in stone to the fact that the British Empire, in its glory, afforded England the opportunity to pillage . . . errrr . . . accumulate valuable artifacts from around the globe without local protests. Now, the Egyptians want their rocks back, the Greeks want their rocks back, and I’m sure the Italians have called once or twice as well. But that didn’t stop us from admiring all of it in one place while we still could.
The Rosetta Stone was amazing. Just a piece of rock, but to hold the key to an entire culture? Simply amazing.
We couldn’t figure out how they managed to remove so many pieces from the Parthenon without losing or breaking a few (insert History of the World Part I joke here).
We saw Colin Farrell’s head carved in stone.
We saw a mummy.
But most important of all, afterward we had our first drink in a British Pub.
Les Miserables was still wonderful. I first saw it with my high school French IV class almost 20 years ago. I still know the lyrics. Leah saw it for the first time and loved it. After the show, we headed off to dinner at a private dining club called The Penthouse. The concierge at our hotel got us in, and oh boy, were we the lucky ones. It was an asian fusion place on the seventh floor of a glass building. The city views were gorgeous, and the food was some of the best we’ve ever had.
After dinner, we checked out the lights in Piccadilly Circus. Not bad for a single day’s worth of vacationing, eh?
