July 28: Two Museums and a Wall

I started out my day with a trip to the British Museum.  I've heard a lot of different opinions about this place.  Some people I know have raved about it and all the wonderful things on display there.  Others complain that it's crowded and overwhelming and difficult to find things in.  I have to say that I agree with both!  It was a nice day outside so I hoped the indoor museum crowd wouldn't be so awful, but it was.  And it didn't feel like such a nice crowd; people were pushing and shoving to see things and the place just had a bad vibe for me in spite of all the incredible things to see.

I bought a map that had a list of the ten "top things to see".  The first one was the Rosetta Stone and that was definitely on my own mental list and it was near the main lobby.  I managed to find it and it took me at least 10 minutes to work my way into the crowd enough to actually see it and the information about it.  I think this museum needs to consider some kind of crowd control around the more popular sights like I've seen in other museums -- such as a roped off "path" to lead people past the object in single file.  As it is, having to elbow my way in and be shoved by others took a lot of the thrill out of seeing this very famous piece of rock.  I made myself think about how old it was and the exciting role it played in historical research, but still I was glad to get out of the room.  I even considered beating a quick retreat out of the museum and finding something different to do today.

I cooled down, though, and decided to pick some galleries and wander through them and enjoy what I saw along the way instead of targeting those top sights.  That was a much more productive approach and I started to have fun.  I decided that since this was the British Museum I'd start with some of the galleries with artifacts from Britian.  It was still crowded, but not impossible, and I was able to take a few pictures and I'll share some of my favorites.

This gold "cape" was found in Wales and was from the early Bronze Age (1900-1600 B.C.):

Here are some artifacts from the 2nd century A.D., during the Roman occupation.  The statue in the middle is Mars:

This is part of a floor mosaic from a 4th century Roman villa in Dorset.  Because of the letters and symbols in the whole mosaic, it is thought to be a depiction of Jesus, which makes it "one of the most important early Christian remains from the Roman Empire".

This helmet is part of the "Sutton Hoo ship burial" from Anglo-Saxon times, probably belonging to a 7th century king:

One of my very favorite things I saw in the British Museum was the "Lewis Chessmen", found on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland and thought to date from around 1200 A.D., a period when the western islands of Scotland belonged to Norway -- so they are thought to have been made in Norway.  They are beautifully carved out of ivory and whale's teeth.

In another section of the museum I saw some beautiful sculptures from Rome:
and a whole gallery full of interesting clocks.  The latter included this incredible "automaton" from 16th century Germany.  It would "sail" across a banquet table to announce the start of dinner.  It includes a tiny clock at the base of the mast that you can't really see from my pictures:


So I did enjoy the British Museum after a bit of an adjustment to the size and crowds.  I had lunch there and stayed until mid-afternoon.

Afterwards, I went to the Museum of London.  I was interested not as much in the museum as in the fact that the museum was advertised to have a section of the old London wall inside it or next to it -- I never was sure which. It has been so interesting to see the old medieval/Roman walls in York and Canterbury on this trip that I thought it would be cool to see the remnants of London's wall as well.

I got to the museum and didn't see an old wall.  I would have gone in and asked, but there was an enormous and noisy school group entering the museum.  After the crowds at the British Museum I didn't think I could take that.  I walked all around the outside of the museum with no luck and gave up.  I did see something else interesting, though: a plaque marking the approximate spot of John Wesley's conversion:

I wouldn't have noticed that if I hadn't been looking for the wall, so it seemed like a fair trade.  I started heading back to the tube stop to go back to my hotel.  However, this was one of those times when my very bad memory for directions worked in my favor.  I took a wrong turn and got all mixed up about where to find the tube and found this instead:

How's that for serendipity?  I had to give up on finding the old London wall to walk right into it a few minutes later!  And I'm not done yet.  Here's a separate piece of the wall I encountered further down the street:

This second piece was accompanied by a sign explaining that this part of the wall was revealed by German bombing during World War II:

I love the idea that some good thing came out of the Blitz besides all the horrible damage it did!