Last Days in London

Friday, September 12

Having the morning to myself, I decided to walk along the canal to Little Venice and then a bit beyond to Paddington Station where I would catch the Underground to the British Museum.

Little Venice

Canal Scene

Along the way, I stopped to talk with a young British fellow who was apparently cleaning the hull of one of the canal boats.  He told me that the canal system is extensive (here is a map to prove it) and that most of the boats have been converted from freighters to tour boats or living quarters.  In fact, he said, he lives on one himself.  Like just about everyone I talked to in Britain, he was friendly and polite.

I continued on to the tube and disembarked at Russell Square near the British Museum.  As I got off the train, I put my hat on (bought especially for the trip at the Target store in Redmond) and walked down the platform.  When I passed by the first opening from the platform opposite, the wind blowing out of it was so strong it blew my hat off and sent it sailing onto the tracks and, in fact, down into the low ditch between the tracks.  I was NOT going to let that stand, so naturally I jumped in after it while carefully avoiding the third rail.  Just as I reached for it, I felt the wind of an oncoming train, made one last grab for the hat, missed it, and tried to get back onto the platform.  Unfortunately, I couldn't quite make it up in time so I dived to the bottom of the ditch and let the train pass over me.  Now THAT is life in London.  I felt bad about it but was not stupid enough to jump in after it.

I arrived at the museum and decided my quest for the day would be to find some artifacts collected by the Vancouver expedition in 1792 when they mapped Puget Sound for the first time.  The information desk was no help ("Vancouver?  You mean the city?") but I stumbled upon these few things myself:

The comb

The grease bowl

I once saw a better collection than this at the Burke.  So, moving on... I went on the the Roman Britain rooms and admired the incomparable Mildenhall Treasure and, going forward to the medieval period, the Sutton Hoo, both of which I remember from our previous visit in 1985.  From there, I got started on the ancient Greeks but cut it a bit short to go to Russell Square for lunch with CJ and Ingrid.

We had sandwiches in the square and then headed back to the museum together where we attended three "Eye Opener Tours" which are led by quintessentially English volunteers. They told us many interesting things about medieval Britain, the Assyrians, and the Elgin Marbles while using artifacts in the exhibits to illustrate their points.  We enjoyed their twisted English sense of humor almost as much as the lectures themselves.

After thoroughly wearing ourselves out at the BM, we went back to our luxurious accommodations for food, wine, and scholarly discussions.  Well, two of the three for me.

Saturday, September 13

Ingrid and I decided to walk to the Natural History Museum for a special exhibit called "Britain: One Million Years of the Human Story".  On the way, we walked through Kensington Park:

The exhibit was pretty good.  It seems that a few years ago, wave erosion on the North Sea coast uncovered what looked like human footprints.  Upon analysis, they proved to be hominid footprints from almost a million years ago.  I think they said this is the earliest evidence in Europe of proto-humans.  The exhibit included a very anatomically correct dummy (model?) illustrating what they are thought to have looked like.  I won't go into detail but, judging from certain characteristics, I'm pretty sure this guy would have been quite popular with some of the ladies.  How these formidable dimensions were deduced from footprints and fossilized bones I have no idea.  Isn't science great though?

Afterwards, we had lunch in the museum courtyard and went to the National Gallery.  There we saw paintings by Constable, Vermeer, Van Gogh, Renoir, Degas, Monet, and Manet.  It was a good time.

From there, it was back to the luxurious accommodations for the last time.

Sunday, September 14

We got up at 6:00, left by 8:00 and were at Heathrow by about 9:30 which was in plenty of time for our flight.  The flight was uneventful, if cramped, and we arrived back at SeaTac an hour ahead of schedule.  We rode home on Shuttle Express with the same driver who took us to the airport nearly two weeks before.

So... back to real life.