1 British Museum We stumbled around the area, looking at our map, saying "there should be a gigantic museum *right here*!" and finally came to this entrance.
2 British Museum Eric is making fun of the sign that warns you that there is a long drop off the other side of that ledge.
3 British Museum Look, a stately lion!
4 British Museum Here's the entrance to the Assyrian wing. It was much less crowded than the Egyptian wing. The Assyrians even have their own flavo(u)r of sphinx.
5 British Museum They also had many pictures of gods holding a little purse and what looks like a pine cone.
6 British Museum Some more gods with little purses and pine cones.
7 British Museum A pride of Sekhmets.
8 British Museum The famous Rosetta stone! It wasn't easy to take a picture of, since it was in a glass case in the middle of the room surrounded by people. Here was our best effort.
9 British Museum A ram protecting some important Egyptian person (for all the Arieses out there).
10 British Museum Here is Bes, the Egyptian dwarf god of luck. He appears to be bonking himself on the head with a sword and sticking his tongue out. You can also see his wang.
11 British Museum Shy Aphrodite. I think this one was called something like 'Aphrodite surprised while taking a bath.'
12 British Museum mosaic!
13 British Museum an acnient game of some sort
14 British Museum 'Night Goddess', which I've always seen described as Lilith. They addressed why this probably wasn't Lilith, but she's still pretty impressive. "Her feet freaked me out. ..." View Comments...
15 British Museum If you are a nerd, you will recognize the big one immediately. If not- it's an ancient 20-sided die. "Hey! I'm a nerd! What's ..." View Comments...
16 British Museum Penis mobile! These wind chimes honoring the god Priapus were hung as good luck charms. "Damndest. Thing. Ever." View Comments...
17 British Museum the famous discus-throwing guy
18 British Museum a claymore and some daggers
19 British Museum Athena, or maybe Minerva
20 British Museum Here's Ganymede- the fellow our street is named after. Zeus thought he was cute, turned into an eagle and carried him off. I could make a joke about Olympus being the original Brokeback mt., but that would be tasteless.
21 British Museum an Aztec (or perhaps Mayan) lightning bolt dragon
22 British Museum a Mayan (or perhaps Aztec) relief shoowing, among other things, a woman pulling a thorn-covered rope through her tongue. I was pointing at this and set off an alarm by breaking an invisible beam. Eric was annoyed, so he took a picture so I could point at it instead.
23 British Musem a zillion year old Go board
24 British Museum Here are the stones for the Go game- it's Korean, and actually about 18-19th century.
25 British Museum Here's a wee jade ox about the size of a kitten. Eric thought it had a lot of character.
26 British Museum some Indian dudes- my guess would be Shiva and Shakti
27 British Museum Ganesh, remover of obstacles!
28 British Museum The 'courtyard' of the museum; it used to be outdoors, but as you can see it's not now. There were souvenir shops, info booths and a little cafeteria.
29 British Museum We left when they closed. Turns out, the entrance we went in was the back entrance. The front here was much more impressive. It seems to say "Baaaah! I am a huge museum! Respect me!"
30 Hotel room Here's the room we stayed in at the Somerset Bayswater Inn. You can see it came with a fully equipped little kitchen- stove, fridge (the lower cabinet next to the stove), dishes and everything. I highly recommend it: www.somersetbayswater.com
31 Hotel room Eric describes it as 'decor by Ikea.' On the shelf is the lion who always travels with me. We did not have internet access, but we could still download pictures and such.
32 Hotel room the living room, complete with tv, dvd player, and boom box
33 Hotel room the bedroom- there's a big wardrobe on the left and a dresser (with a little tv on it) on the right
34 Hotel room big wardrobe, part of the bedroom, looking into the bathroom. I took many long, soaking baths in the large tub there.
35 Hotel room the bathroom... I really liked that sink design
36 Hotel room Just in case you thought this was a new building, check out how not level the floor is.
37 Hotel hallway ...and the hallways were pretty narrow too. We think this hotel is made of at least 3 buildings stuck together. It was like a maze in some parts.
38 Hotel room view Here's the view from our window.
39 Phone booths The title pretty much covers it. This was near the entrance to Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens.
40 Kensington Gardens We decided to take a stroll there on our last day in London- it wasn't very far from our hotel.
41 Kensington Gardens This was right near a Princess Di memorial playground. No adults allowed unless accompanied by children (seriously).
42 Kensington Gardens There was a tree trunk that had been carved with a bunch of little figures... it was in a cage to keep people from messing with it, I expect. But we were still able to get a good shot.
43 Kensington Gardens This was near Kensington Palace.
44 Kensington Gardens Old folks feeding the pigeons. When they broke out the food, pigeons and squirrels came from every direction to hassle them.
45 Kensington Palace Queen Victoria was born here, and Princess Di lived here after her divorce.
46 Kensington Palace The front of the palace has this statue of William 3, who looks like a big ol' pirate.
47 Kensington Palace The gates had these intricate gilt designs incorporating a rose, a thistle, and a shamrock... I'm guessing for England, Scotland and Ireland. Does Wales have a flower?
48 Kensington Gardens The gate to this one was locked, but you could still get a pretty good look. There were huge koi in the pond.
49 Kensington Gardens Here's a statue mentioning Queen Victoria's fondness for Kensington.
50 Kensington Gardens Nearby was the Round Pond. When anyone approaches, the wildlife there looks to see if you might start emitting food.
51 Kensington Gardens I dug out a packet of trail mix (visible on the left) and immediately this immense swan approached me and demanded that I deliver the goods. I think it had a shiv.
52 Kensington Gardens In these shots, I had my hair pulled back in what turned out to be an extremely unflattering way, so I cropped my head out of embarrassment. It was awfully windy, and sunny- so I was squinty too.
53 Kensington Gardens Pigeons sat on my hand and if the food wasn't coming fast enough, pecked at the clear wrapper where they could see the food.
54 Kensington Gardens At one point I had 2 on my arm and a third on the backs of the other two. No, I did not get pooped on.
55 Kensington Gardens A herd of purple crocuses (I think) grazing under a tree.
56 The Orangery This was across from the Kensington Palace. We thought it might be nice to get out of the wind for awhile and have something warm.
57 The Orangery ...and were confronted by a table of delicious-looking baked goods!
58 The Orangery So we decided to have tea. Here is Eric, enjoying his English Breakfast tea. We were somewhat underdressed for this place, but they let us in anyway. I had Earl Grey, hot.
59 The Orangery Scone, clotted cream, and jam. I thought clotted cream always sounded disgusting, but it's something between butter and whipped cream. Yum!
60 The Orangery a splendid-smelling flower arrangement
61 Kensington Gardens This is the Flower Walk. Of course, it's not in full flowering mode yet, but it was still pretty green.
62 Kensington Gardens The squirrels and pigeons were as tame as they could be. Note the evil look in this one's eye, as if he is saying "you are not supposed to take pictures of me, you're supposed to feed me, you jerk!"
63 Kensington Gardens another rock dove looking for a free lunch
64 Kensington Gardens Look! A big tree!
65 Prince Albert Memorial And now, the opulent Albert Memorial. The corners had personifications of the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Here's the Americas.
66 Prince Albert Memorial This one's Africa.
67 Prince Albert Memorial There he is in gilt. Below him are 100+ figures representing all the famous people who ever lived, plus figures on the corners representing the arts, industry, and science.
68 Prince Albert Memorial Albert was a humble fellow. He said he didn't want a memorial at all, and "if (as is very likely) it became an artistic monstrousity like most of our monuments, it would upset my equanimity to be permanently ridiculed and laughed at in effigy." Poor guy, it's like they used that quote to design it.
69 Prince Albert Memorial My guidebook says he is 'thumbing through a catalog for his Great Exhibition', which, according to Wikipedia, was the first world's fair. You can see how detailed this thing is, even the ceiling.
70 Prince Albert Memorial Here's the Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences, now mostly used as a concert hall. Guidebook says the acoustics were so terrible before they fixed them, it inspired the joke that the only way a British composer could hear his work twice was by playing here.
71 Princess Di Memorial I'd heard of this, but it wasn't at all what I expected. It was a 'moat without a castle'- a granite stream bed on a hillside where the water starts at the top, goes down both sides of the ring and ends in a reflecting pool at the bottom.
72 Princess Di Memorial There were problems with it when it first opened. It got muddy, clogged, and people waded in it and slipped and brained themselves. So they closed it and fixed the problems.
73 Princess Di Memorial The thing I really liked was all the different textures along the water routes.
74 Princess Di Memorial The different textures meant that the water made all sorts off different sounds along the 'river'.
75 Princess Di Memorial It was almost like it was a memorial to water as well as to the Princess.
76 Princess Di Memorial Here I am without the horribly unflattering hair-tied-back style.
77 Princess Di Memorial There weren't tons of people there, but in the summer lots of people come. They just cool their feet though instead of wading now.
78 Princess Di Memorial They also added a little sidewalk around it so that there wasn't a mud pit around it.
79 Kensington Gardens Heading down along the Serpentine Lake, you see this cute statue of Peter Pan by George Frampton. Hey, if you combine the two you get Peter Frampton!
80 Kensington Gardens The base of the statue was covered with characters from the book. Here's a couple of little well-dressed fairies being hassled by a squirrel; he probably wants their trail mix.
81 Hyde Park We crossed some invisible line and went from Kensington Gardens to Hyde Park. We started heading back, since we had a flight to catch to Amsterdam that night. But on the way we passed the Italian Garden and Fountains.
82 Hyde Park The statue there, if I remember correctly, is Jonas Salk.
83 Hyde Park These eroded fountains were right at the base of Serpentine Lake.
84 Hyde Park And our final picture from London was this water fountain which had this statue of bears hugging. Awww!
