Day 2: The West End of South Park

I had a small scare this morning because my phone wasn't charging and I started to worry that I had an insufficient adapter or converter. I also didn't know how to get wifi in my hostel so I left quite early to go find a coffee shop to charge and use my devices. I can't tell you how much of a relief it was when my phone began to charge (okay, I can: it was an 8.2 on a scale from 1 to 10). I also discovered how nice it is to sit in a coffee shop, drink a coffee, and work while you listen to the general noise (and accents: oh, the accents!!).

After an hour or so of that, I meandered my way to the British Musem, finding interesting shops to visit and churches to see along the way. I finally arrived (didn't get too lost on the way) , entered, and had to just stop and stare. The place is enormous. There are whole floors I wasn't able to visit, and I spent six hours there. SIX HOURS AND I BARELY MANAGED TO KNOCK OUT A THIRD OF IT. I saw some amazing things, though, like the Rosetta Stone (almost got a little emotional about that for some reason) and some Anglo-Saxon relics from the Sutton Hoo Burial Site and some gorgeous Chinese pots and "The Royal Gold Cup" which is apparently priceless and will never leave the British Museum because no one is willing to insure something so valuable.

But my favorite part was probably the Assyrian reliefs, possibly because I knew so little about them going in. They were quite impressive. It started with the Gate Guardians, these ten-foot tall winged lions with human heads that were placed in entryways to ward off evil. Then I saw the Gates of Balawat, which were close to thirty feet tall, these great big wooden things with copper bands detailing the greatness of an Assyrian king whose name escapes me. I joined a free tour of the reliefs of Ashurnasirpal's throne room, and then wandered through Ashurbanipal's lion hunt reliefs, which were actually pretty haunting--the artist put some real emotion into the dying lions.

The Gates of Balawat

A Gate Guardian: these things had cuneiform writing all around them describing the exploits of the king who comissioned them (in this case Ashurnasirpal)

A victim of Ashurbanipal's lion hunt

Then I saw the Parthenon, which was surprisingly funny. Most of the frieze work was about a procession for Athena, but this one set of reliefs called the metopes were about the wedding of the King of Lapith. The Lapith people were long-time enemies of the centaurs, but they invited them to the royal wedding: the centaurs, being centaurs, got too drunk, became belligerent, and tried to carry off the Lapith women. Most the the metopes were about the drunken brawl that followed. They were all given little descriptions like "The centaur is trying to hug the Lapith, who is pushing away with his arm. The Lapith's head is in Athens." The whole gallery was peppered with "This body part is in Greece" statements because some idiot tried to store explosives in the Parthenon and they blew up in 1678. That was only after it became a church in 500 CE and was severely defaced by religious nuts who didn't give a fig for history. It is only a bedraggled remnant of its former glory.

The Parthenon gallery, from the south side

A metope showing a centaur in the "I love you, man!" stage of drunkenness and a Lapith who does not want the affection he's being offered

After an exhausting afternoon of learning bits and pieces of world history, I strolled over to Leicester Square, where I saw my first professional stage musical production. Since I was in London, I wanted to see something classy and culturally relevant: but I watched The Book of Mormon instead. It was brilliant. The only problem is that now I have all of these lovely tunes stuck in my head which I can't sing in public because, having been written by the creators of South Park, they're profane in several languages.

I should note, I'm sorry that I haven't been posting as many photographs of the trip as I would like. This is partly because I'm not much of a photographer and would rather drink in the sights than take poor photographs that do them no justice. It also has a lot to do with the fact that my camera broke some time between the Eagle Creek trip and taking off in Vancouver. It still works on some level but the autoexposure doesn't function anymore and skies come out all purple:

My first view of the Thames! Just imagine that it's not pink everywhere.

I can still take pictures inside where the light isn't so strong, but that won't work so well when I'm hiking around Wales and whatnot. I'm going to try to get a camera while I'm in Notting Hill today.