Nerding out at the British Museum

 One of the things Margarite was really looking forward to on this trip was visiting the British Museum. 

On our way there we came across some kind of television shoot right next to the museum. We couldn’t see any actors, but we think they might have been shooting “Ted Lasso.”

Not so fun fact: The British Museum houses more stolen artifacts than any other place in the world. 

Despite it’s lousy reputation for refusing to repatriate anything back to its rightful owner, The British Museum is one of the largest in the world and far be it for us to judge. We went to see history, and its vast collection did not disappoint.

The museum is known for such artifacts as The Elgin Marbles, the Sutton Hoo Mask, and The Rosetta Stone

 but nothing could prepare us for its outstanding collection of mummies and sarcophagi in the Egyptian section. These were absolutely jaw dropping!

Margarite fancies herself a history buff so when we came upon the Standard of Ur and some of the El-Amarna letters, she just about fainted. 

 To be able to gaze at the actual correspondence between Kings and ancient Pharoahs was just awesome. In this case it was a letter complaining that the Pharoah had sent along an unsatisfactory dower for the King’s daughter.

We spent hours there, and came to the conclusion the there’s no way we were going to be able to see the whole thing in one day. We would just have to come back. We’ve got no problem with that!

First full day in London: theatre-palooza!

 It was that weird time when you are experiencing the high of being in a new place but the jet lag hasn’t quite kicked in, and we were grabbing the bull by the horns. We started the day by doing down to TKTS in Leicester Square to see if they had any discount tickets left for the day, and picked up matinee seats for “Come From Away” and evening seats for “Life of Pi.” 

We then hopped on the Tube to go check out the Sir John Soane Museum. 

The Soane Museum was a recommendation from a friend who lives in town and it’s open to the public for free. It was pretty cool. Sir John Soane was an architect and a collector of artifacts whose house is now a museum. 

The artifacts were fascinating, but I think the whole trip there was worth seeing the sarcophagus of Egyptian pharaoh Seti I. Not sure how Soane acquired it, but whatever…there it was!

The Soane Museum didn’t take long, so after about 45 minutes we were headed back towards the Phoenix Theatre for our matinee of “Come From Away”.

“Come From Away” is a musical about the 7000 plane passengers who were diverted to the small Newfoundland town of Gander on 9/11. It was really good, and was particularly impactful for me because I was in London on 9/11 having just landed for a 3 week backpacking trip. Many of the themes in the show were identical to my experience of being in strange place during those days. The confusion, the worry for my family and my country, the sympathy, the suspicion, the moment of silence, and the feeling that something had changed when I got back home. The writers totally nailed the aura of the times.

We wandered around a bit to kill time between shows and stumbled upon Trafalgar Square and Chinatown. 

Trafalgar Square was massive and crowded and full of statues of famous Brits who obviously did something amazing to warrant the caliber of their monuments. From one spot in the Square, we could see Big Ben, the London Eye, The Admirality Arch and the National Museum all from the same spot. We felt like were standing in a London travel brochure decoupage.

We headed back towards the Wyndham’s Theatre for our second show, and ducked into Chinatown for a sec to get an ice cream cone. 

The amount of people walking down the street was so massive, I had to stop someone to ask if there was something special going on, or if it was always this crowded. She assured me that London was always like this on a Saturday evening. 

We had great seats to Life of Pi.

 Of the two shows we saw that day, this one was our favorite. The puppetry and flow of the set changes was just amazing! I’m glad we were able to see this on the West End because it doesn’t seem like the kind of play that can be done just anywhere. 

 ~Margarite