Day 6: Not actually a repeat of day 2

Finally got a proper night's sleep last night, and it was wonderful. I woke up refreshed and ready to start the day.

I visited the British Museum again today, walking to it with a more southerly route (through the Temple district) than I had on Friday. I'm very glad I did, for I got to see the front of the Royal Courts of Justice and also walked past a little shop right across the street from it. Twinings, the tea company that has been in operation in that location (and owned by the same family) since 1706. It is the oldest company to still be operating in the same premesis, and it has been selling tea there (though it started with coffee because tea used to be insanely expensive, we're talking one pound of the stuff for more than the yearly salary of a lawyer) since before the United States was even a dream in the mind of a young colonial. It's this long, narrow shop with shelves full of different teas at the front and a little bar with free sampling at the back. I took full advantage and tried a host of delicious teas. My favorite was a green tea blend called Butterflies in Love. It smells like an English garden and tastes like no tea I have ever had. The staff were incredibly friendly, giving me suggestions for what else in London to visit (I unfortunately was not able to follow those) and for things to do with tea, like bake and cook with the leaves (I definitely plan to try this). The woman doing the sampling thought I was English for some reason--I guess because I don't have a really broad Southern or East Coast accent. I should have asked where she was from, but I feel like she was possibly Italian.

The Twinings shopfront

I finally extricated myself from the deliciousness and went to the British museum to catch all of the things I had missed. There were some gorgeous Chinese paintings and another great room (because it was almost empty) containing classical columns (mostly the tops of classical columns, actually), many of which were rescued from the rubble of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. They were astonishingly large; I had always imagined them to be about two or three feet wide but they were more than twice that.

Column topper, with obliging but unwitting tourists for scale

I learned from this adventure that I really like giant scuptures that are at least three millenia old; the rest I could take or leave. Although there were some amusing carved wooden tiles from a church in East England that I actually learned about on a free tour on Friday but forgot to mention then; they're called the Tring Tiles and they describe the previously unrecorded stories of Jesus growing up.

The Tring tiles

The Church of England (or the Pope, I can't remember how old these are) frowned upon this severely, but local churches would have stories that diverged a bit from the canon, describing the life of Jesus in the big blank space between his birth and his adulthood. They were a bit cheeky, so I'm not surprised that those higher up were less enthused. For example, in one of them Jesus can be seen making little puddles in the ground. Another boy comes up and messes with one of them, for which transgression Jesus kills him. Then the parents all speak and Jesus is properly chastized and he returns the boy to life. There are many similar tiles, so the other stories are mostly about how all the parents in the village don't want Jesus to play with their children; they take actions such as hiding their kids in an oven, but no attempt to protect their children from the son of God is particularly successful. I wonder if Christopher Moore knew about these tiles when he was writing Lamb.

I had a bit less stamina today than yesterday, so I left after about two or three hours and went off in search of Covent Garden, which sounded interesting enough for something to do while I waited to see Once  (at the box office I got  surprisingly cheap front-row seats, although I later found out that front row means that your eyes are at the level of the stage floor and it's a bit difficult to see over). After quite a long time of increasingly frantic searching, I finally gave up and decided to go sit for a bit at Leicester Square instead. Ten seconds later I saw a sign for the Covent Garden Market. It was a very nice place and I had some more lovely shopping experiences (I would say that Londoners are wonderful but all of the good retailers I've met so far have been from Europe).

I finally had Indian food tonight! I got a biryani which a friend of mine from work back at ASU had reccommended. It was delicious. Then I hurried over to the Phoenix Theatre to see Once, a sweet and charming musical about music and Czech people and Dublin.

The Phoenix interior; it was quite a pretty theater 

During intermission (and before the show) guests could walk up on stage and get a drink. An odd but space-efficient place for a bar. Before the show, the cast played a bunch of songs on stage while everyone got their drinks. It was surreal but awesome.

I didn't like the ending so much, because I was expecting a bit more wrap-up and suddenly the lights came up and everyone was bowing and everyone else was clapping, but it was a masterful performance with great comedy and great music. On the whole, I very much enjoyed both stage productions I saw this week, but if I were to see one of them again it would be The Book of Mormon because I am an uncultured swine.