After the first big sightseeing trip I decided to put the rest of London into one post.
June 2nd. As all of you of course know, the 2nd day of June is the anniversary of the Queen's coronation, and the royals like to make sure everyone knows it. I walked over to Hyde Park to watch the annual horse artillery charge and 61-gun salute. It was pretty impressive that decades after the whole horse thing went out of style they can still pull this off without cavalry officers nursing shattered spines laying all over the field. At a few minutes to noon a whole line of cavalry came charging full speed down the field towards where I was sitting with the Royal Marine Band, which had just finished up a fantastic rendition of the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song. In under a minute, soldiers had jumped off their horses and set up the cannons; each cannon involved a group of about six - when everything was set up one of them would grab the reins of every other horse and ride off. While watching the entire spectacle I had the privilege of standing next to a group of old Tories who, it appeared, hadn't missed the Coronation Day celebrations since the Blitz. During the charge I heard 'This makes me proud to be a Briton' in perfect Queen's English coming from their expensively-dressed huddle more than once.
Following the band down the path towards Buckingham, I stood in front of the palace again, only this time I could actually get some people-watching in. There was a huge tea party going on inside the walls filled with royals, government officials and military heroes (there was more than one Victoria Cross in that group). I burned some time watching the obnoxiously-dressed people amble out of the party, through the gates, and then hop into a waiting taxi. I also got to see the Beefeatermobile taking a group of them back to their barracks.
The British Museum: one of the benefits of having an empire is the loot you can take from your colonies. Filled with some of the most famous artifacts in the world, thanks mostly to Her Majesty Queen Victoria, it's overwhelming. An average piece in a single room was often the type of thing that would be another museum's centerpiece. The place is huge, so I concentrated on Egypt, Assyria, Greece and the Islamic World. In one of the more random moments of my life I ran into Jacob (the Tufts student visiting Oxford the same time as me) in front of a 'horrors of war' poster that dealt with the loss of artifacts in Iraq - yes, that is the horror of war according to the wizened British curators.
I also made time to hit another museum with mummies. The Petrie Collection at University College London is nestled away in a campus building. It's a series of rooms with shelves stacked with thousands of Egyptian artifacts, including the oldest clothing on earth (a 5000-year-old linen shirt), several sarcophagi, the random human skeleton just chilling in a giant burial pot, etc. The best part is that you're given a flashlight at the front desk - the lights are kept close to off for preservation purposes; there were a few moments of 'oh, what could that b - oh my god that is a skull looking back at me').
The rest of my time in London was spent wandering, hanging out with a friend from home studying abroad there, checking out Harrod's (the millionaire's Walmart - want a mammoth tusk? a van Gogh? Beluga caviar? all in the same place?... Harrod's), and looking for a big enough first aid kit for Yemen.
*To those who see how I made a pun involving the large gap in between my posts and the London Underground, thank you. I'll be here all week.
I thought the * was to give credit to a certain cousin who also used the same blog title in a posting from 2009. The pun is still appreciated, however. Keep the good times rolling.
ReplyDeleteAK