Today we continued what seems to be a walking tour of London.  I gave up trying to figure out Mapquest and moved to the Apple Maps app which seems to work much better.  In addition to it being much easier to follow, it also displays directly on my Apple watch so I don’t need to keep looking at my phone.  The directions Bluetooth directly into my hearing aids, and the watch even vibrates when I have a turn coming up.  How did we ever get around before technology?

The destination today is the British Museum.  Known especially for its Egyptian artifacts it even has the actual Rosetta Stone!  Entrance is free, but you need to sign up online for an entrance time.  It opens at 10:00AM and we were able to score tickets for 10:40AM.  After yesterdays long walk, we thought we would take the Tube, but there wasn’t a straightforward path without taking busses, so we decided to just walk the 2.1 miles.  It was actually a wonderful walk, going past Buckingham Palace, cutting through St-James Park to Trafalgar Square before arriving at the British Museum just before 10:00AM.  The line was already queuing up down the street and around the block when we arrived, so we just joined the line and figured we probably wouldn’t make it to the entrance by 10:40AM anyway.

The line moved fairly quickly, and we made it to the entrance by 10:20, but they just scanned us in.  This is England, and not Germany, so the English are not really into rules like the Germans.   No one would think to cross the street in Germany without having a green pedestrian signal, but no one waits in England.  If you don’t see any cars, you just cross.  All the intersections are marked “Look Left” or “Look Right” so you know which way the cars are coming as it’s easy to get confused since they drive on the “wrong” side of the road.

The British Museum is huge!  It’s actually five stories tall, but most of the artifacts are on the first and third floors.  We decided to tackle it by floor, stopping for lunch when we finished the first floor.  Most of the collections are stone sculptures, bas-reliefs, and metalwork.  There was very little in the way of painting and virtually no religious artifacts.  The British Museum’s most famous artifact is the actual Rosetta Stone, and people were always crowding around the display for photographs. 

There is also the Nereid Monument which is a 400BC temple from Xanthos, close to present day Turkey.  It’s ruins were discovered in 1840’s and shipped to the British Museum for display.  The display is the front façade for the entire building and is huge!  It also includes the Elgin Marbles, a series of 500BC Greek statues taken from the Parthenon in Athens, Greece.  But the largest collections center around Egypt and the collections include dozens of sarcophagi and “mummys”. Along with thousands and thousands of Egyptian, Assyrian and other Middle East artifacts.  Some of the earliest Egyptian artifacts date back to 3500BC and earlier.

On a side note, seeing all the ancient artifacts from some of the earliest civilizations in a British museum, I think I better understand the modern dilemma with museums in general.  Back in the 19th century, adventurers travelled all around the world to "discover" these ancient treasures.  The idea was that the treasures were located in the uncivilized parts of the world and it was only right that they should be shipped to the "civilized" world so that "civilized" people could view them.  The "uncivilized" people were simply not responsible enough to be trusted with such valuable artifacts.  Or modern sensibilities mostly see this as theft of valuable artifacts from people who didn't have the power to stop them.  In seeing all this ancient treasure, especially the Greek and Egyptian artifacts, it just doesn't seem right that these artifacts belong in a museum in the country where they were found and the items be returned back to the descendants of the original civilizations.  Were these pieces found for the first time today, there would be a lot more pressure to leave them where they were found and study them where they exist.   I'm sure we will figure this out eventually, as the answer is probably somewhere in between.

After spending about 2 hours touring the first floor, we took a short break for a regenerating snack of Coke Zero and a chocolate muffin, and we were ready to tackle the upper floors.  The upper floors also include artifacts from Asia, Japan, and even a basement display of African art.  As an engineer, I particularly enjoyed the clock collection which included some very complex 15^th and 16^th century clocks.  It was amazing how technically advanced clockmakers were even in these very early days.

By 3:00PM we had seen most of what we wanted to see, though if we lived locally, we could visit many more times and still not see everything.  We performed our mandatory stop at the museum gift shop for t-shirts and magnets.  By now, we were both pretty tired out, because we had not only walked the 2.1 miles to get to the British Museum, but we had walked around the museum the entire time we were there.  Yesterday, when we were tired and not really wanting to walk back fro the Tower of London, we were able to take the “Tube”.  There are underground stations along the way back to the hotel, but unfortunately the path home involve multiple trains and bus transfers.  This would be simple for your typical Londoner, but were just too complicated for our late afternoon brains. 

So we decided to suck it up and walk back to the hotel.  But we did take an alternative path through Piccadilly Circus to check out some more of London.   On the way we passed by London’s Chinatown, and as we passed through Piccadilly Square itself, we ran right into the middle of a Sikh protest.  I don’t think Jody or I had ever seen a Sikh protest before.  Most Sikh’s we have ever met were quiet and nice.  I didn’t think they ever went against authority , but these guys were mad about Indias   The protest was to get India out of Khalistan, which is actually as movement among Sikhs to establish a homeland in India for the Sikhs, which they have been trying to establish since the 1980’s.  Who knew?  I feel uninformed.

The rest of the walk home was uneventful though we dis pass by the Royal Academy of Performing Arts, and a theatre playing Fawlty Towers – The Play.  We arrived back to the hotel at about 4:00PM  to continue and hopefully conclude the ongoing baggage saga.  I texted the courier company and they said that our luggage was on the truck and would be delivered between 3PM and 5PM.  We waited until about 5:45 and decided we were hungry and went back to the Victoria Market, this time to Black Bear Burger and had a delicious dinner of burgers and fries.   By the time we got back to the hotel itb was about 7PM and I texted back the courier company for an updated ETA.  He called the driver whod said he was 20-30 minutes out.

Finally, at about 7:30, the courier showed up, the bags were returned and the lost luggage drama was concluded!  We finally have all our “stuff” back and all is again right with the world.  After all the walking of the last two days, we decided tomorrow would be a day of rest before beginning the actual tour in earnest on Tuesday morning.  We intend to sleep late, not set the alarm, and wander over to the Tate Modern art museum when we get up.  This time we can take the “Tube” from Victoria Station and get within a few minutes walking distance.  The last couple of days our Apple watches have recorded over 20,000 steps or about 10 miles per day.  It’s time for a little quiet time.