The British Museum

The British Museum

You have my word that there are indeed still obscurities for me to talk about.  They're coming.  When I boasted about the road less travelled I did mean it, but one has to make concessions.  It's all well and good to deny yourself the parts of a journey overseas that you feel might not, in all, be that life-changing but it's another to tell the friend your travelling with to follow suit.  Good exploring should be a matter of give and take.

So Michael and I went to a museum.

Well no, actually, we went to 'The' museum.  I feel like it deserves the title.  What's that America?  I cant hear you over the sound of the bloody Rosetta Stone!  I'm sorry? The Smithsonian? Aha ha, how quaint.  Come back when your economic imperialism has netted you some of the most significant archaeological finds in the history of that discipline.  Nice planes by the way though, did you make them yourself?  ...wooooow.

In actual fact the Elgin Marbles were a lot more entertaining than anyone could have led me to believe.  No wonder the British don't want to give them back to their rightful owners, who wouldn't want to hold into that age old story, sculpted scene by beautiful scene, of a man-

Wait. What?

It's a muscled stranger jumping out of nowhere to bring the pain to a completely unsuspecting centaur?* Nice.

There's to much in the British museum to catalogue appropriately.  To be honest, it would definitely have cheapened the experience to be stopping constantly to frame up shots, that didn't didn't stop people around us from trying though.  Nor did the weight and significance of the collected history of mankind stop a gang of Albanian teenagers from shouting at each other constantly about the latest rap video or funny shoes or something.  Perhaps we're all still centaurs and affronted Greeks in our own small way.

It was a fantastic experience though.  In all honesty once you work your way through the sarcophagi and ceremonial armours there are some fantastic sights to see.

An exhibition of 20th century Japanese art was completely astounding and their examination of global economic history yielded some fantastic sights.

It would be a holiday in and of itself, but we had bookshops to go to baby!  Plus there were crowds and our legs were sore.

*Traditionally centaurs have been associated with rape, abduction and generally being that (horse)guy at parties, so he probably deserved it, right?