Merry in London

In 2013, Rob and I took a cruise that landed us in places like Athens and Cairo and Ephesus (Turkey). As we toured around, we kept hearing the same comment from guides. Something along the lines of “What you see here is a replica. The real version is in the British Museum in London.”

And so for 10 years, Rob and I have been longing to visit the British Museum to see all the good stuff.  The real stuff. The stuff that was – depending on your viewpoint – either imperially acquired in a “Finders Keepers” approach, or is being lovingly and expertly housed and protected for all to enjoy.

So the third Bucket List item of our Epic Trip of 2023 was a 4-day stay in London after we bid farewell to the Island Princess in Southampton, England. We had planned to spend most of the four days in the British Museum. Instead, lured by feeling unexpectedly comfortable and curious, we spent two days in the museum and two days playing American Tourists in London. We had a blast!

Determined to have a more local experience, we decided to forego a points-earning hotel chain and instead found a homebase practically touching the British Museum. The old, stately building featured white-gloved doormen, housekeepers in traditional maids’ outfits, Afternoon Tea, a garden, a comfy lounge decked out in All Things Leopard, and blessedly after-market air conditioning in all the rooms. We absolutely loved our stay and decided it shall be Our London Hotel if we are ever lucky enough to return.  

Hotel behind us, red phone booth in front of us,
British Museum next to us. PERFECT location!

We LOVED hanging out at the Leopard Bar!
So much so, we're trying to figure out how
to tastefully incorporate some leopard
prints at Woodhaven. Pro tip: Traveling
can be aesthetically dangerous

We happened to be in London during quite a heat wave. To us, it was rather pleasant – in the mid-80s and actually warmer than our very brief stay in Ft. Lauderdale at the beginning of our trip. But the local Londoners – and their buildings – were NOT used to such extreme temperatures. I didn’t hear much complaining, but there was quite a bit of glistening on the stiff upper lips.

We spent our first Tour Day riding a double-decker bus all around the city past the iconic spots. It took a few stops before we were able to snag seats upstairs in the open, fresh air. And then after a few stops more, we had the whole upper deck practically to ourselves as a thunderstorm dumped some of the biggest raindrops I’ve ever seen.  Determined to keep our prime seats – and keeping hope alive that the rain would eventually stop – Rob and I actually had quite a laugh-filled, very wet trek across the Tower Bridge and past the Tower of London with just a couple other diehards who were not going to let a whole lotta rain ruin their touristy fun.

It was a very dramatic 10 minutes!
By the time we got back to our hotel,
the only thing still wet was the waistband
of my shorts.

Between the bus ride, about 15 miles of walking, a boat tour on the Thames, an inadequately air-conditioned rotation on The Eye, and heavy reliance on Trip Advisor restaurant reviews, we did all the London Must Do’s we could while still making the British Museum our priority.

 I had no idea the Tower Bridge has
turquoise highlights!

Stopped by Buckingham Palace but His Majesty
wasn't accepting visitors

Very clearly new signage

Parliament and Big Ben by river boat.
We got to hear it chime 10:00! SO cool.

The Tower of London. We didn't do a tour but we
did stop by the gift shop. I expected all sorts of 
weird prisony torture stuff. Instead, it was the
classiest souvenir shop I saw the entire trip.
Very elegant jewelry, tea sets, scarves, etc.

This was more the standard souvenir
store. SO much merchandising!
And yes, I came home with one treasure.

Yes, she bobbles! I really wanted a 
King Charles bobblehead, but a 
store owner told me they sold
out completely all over town during
the coronation. The English sure love
their bobbleheads! I decided not to get
a half-price Prince Charles bobblehead...

The London Eye. It is pretty much 
always in motion (slowly) and takes 
about 30 minutes to make one rotation.
Glad we did it - the views were great!
Would have been even better if it 
hadn't felt like we were in a greenhouse.

There were 27 of us in the pod.
Benches were in the middle, 
air conditioning vents sparsely
dotted around the perimeter

Apparently it is London culture to stop
at a pub after work on the way home.
Pubs were super crowded from about
5:00 to 6:30 each night.

Blending in with the late crowd

These painted reminders were
SUPER helpful! Also very helpful:
Londoners are very serious about 
their pedestrian crosswalks. If you 
cross properly, yellow lamps flash and
traffic literally screeches to a halt to
let you cross. We had a bicycle group
nearly skid to a stop when we stepped 
off a crosswalk's curb. 

Picadilly Circus -- which is basically
London's version of Times Square.
Lots of theaters, signage, traffic, people.

Thanks to Rob's TripAdvisor Skills,
I had the BEST fish and chips of my
life in this little restaurant tucked under
some train tracks. Plus, the name.

We took a fascinating tour of the Winston Churchill
War Rooms which is an underground complex of 
living quarters and offices the Prime Minister
secretly used during WWII. Pictured here is 
Winston's underground bedroom behind glass.
However, some VIPs were getting a special 
tour and got to be inside the room. Recognize 
the woman? That's Jenna Fischer from 
"The Office." Social media confirmed it!

The British Museum was, in a word, overwhelming. We spent a total of 14 hours touring its exhibits and we still did not see everything on display. And I can assure you, I did not come close to absorbing even half of the detailed historical information I read. So much reading.

One explanation for how stuff ended
up in the museum

The exhibits were organized geographically. The most popular were Greece and Egypt. Africa, which was downstairs, seemed a bit lonely. The newest stuff (in a themed exhibit on clocks and money) was from just a couple of years ago. The oldest stuff was 6000ish BC. Yes, 6000 B. C.

I was super excited to see all the REAL friezes from the Parthenon in Athens. None of that replica stuff the folks in the Acropolis Museum are relegated to displaying.

I was shocked the friezes weren't behind glass. 
SO MUCH TEMPTATION!

I was also stunned to be able to walk around and BEHIND one of the original Caryatids from the Erechtheum. When we were in Athens, we saw some of the marble women at a guarded and secured distance as they were being restored. The British Museum, on the other hand, had a Maiden just standing there on a pedestal, open to the air, totally within touching distance. Which I resisted since I’m a rule follower AND the security cameras were conspicuous. Nevertheless, I was enthralled to be able to see one of the original “Daughters of Athens” not only up close and personal, but also see her braided hair resting between her shoulder blades. I spent quite a few minutes staring at that lady’s hair.

Piglet for size reference. Also, I made
sure he didn't touch the Caryatid...
he's a good pig.

The detail in the back -- that nobody
was likely to see -- was amazing.

Other unexpected treasures that blew my mind were: a head from Easter Island; a navigation instrument used by George Vancouver (namesake of a town near Woodhaven); and the Rosetta Stone. Yes, THE Rosetta Stone. Behind glass but close enough to see the three distinct, ancient languages etched in the stone that cracked the code on Egyptian hieroglyphics. I remain mystified how ancient civilizations were able to so precisely etch letters and images in stone.

His name is Hoa Hakananai'a
which means -- appropriately -- 
 "lost, hidden, or stolen friend"

The bottom piece was used by George
Vancouver in 1791 to survey the 
Pacific coastline of North America.
Ummm... WOW!

The Rosetta Stone with a fellow
tourist for size reference. There were
fingerprints all over the glass by the 
end of the day.

Despite all that History of Civilization, the single item I spent the most time staring at was a coin smaller than my thumbnail. Just hanging out with a bunch of other coins in Room 70 of 94 was this:

Coin #3 is the one I kept staring at

Handy official information

Coin #3 was minted by Pontius Pilate during the time Jesus was walking the Earth. Next to it was a coin from King Herod’s reign – you know, the nasty king who was (appropriately) threatened by the birth of a baby in Bethlehem so he sent some wise old guys to gather intel?

Nonchalantly sprinkled about this enormous, secular museum of human history were tidbits like this. Tidbits that suggest the stuff – and the people – in the Bible are actually real. As a Christian, I believe this to be true, but to see real things that I could hold in my hand (stupid glass and cameras) somehow made it realer and truer.

But it wasn’t just New Testament Jesus stuff.  In other rooms, there were artifacts from times, places, and people mentioned in the Old Testament. Things like references to King Hezekiah and items from Assyria and Judah and Nineveh and Nimrud. Just mixed in with other things not mentioned in the Bible.

Slowly yet suddenly, the Old Testament became real. Suddenly, the stories in the Bible weren’t just Bible stories, they were historical stories of human life on this planet. Part of me already knew and accepted this, but another part of me wasn’t convinced. That part, I realized, was going mostly on faith and hope but still had some doubts. But as I told Rob, going to Israel in 2013 made the New Testament real. Going to the British Museum surprised the heck out of me by making the Old Testament real (at least most of it; I mean, there’s still some wacky, symbolic stuff in there…). I went in as a tourist and came out more grounded in my faith. So totally not the impact I thought the British Museum would have on me. Hallelujah for travel!

As Rob and I were leaving our lovely garden-side hotel last week to begin a long planes-trains-and-automobiles trek back to Woodhaven, we were not really ready to return home. Much to our surprise, we loved London. We felt at home there. We felt safe there. We felt at peace there even though it was full of people and noise and cars surprising us from the wrong direction.

I guess a measure of a fantastic trip is the desire to do it all again.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed so many At Sea days on the cruise across the Atlantic. In fact, I could have used at least two more. We are now contemplating longer cruises and cruises where we might not get off the ship in port at all (hola, Mexico!). 

I expected to be intrigued by Iceland, but I did not expect to fall in love with its landscape and its people. And I did not expect four stops to not be enough.

And London was supposed to just be a place to stay while we focused on exploring the British Museum. Instead, we found a city (and a hotel) that we want to return to, maybe even repeatedly.

In the dark days of Covid Quarantine, when we weren’t jazzed about traveling to the grocery store let alone another country, Rob and I promised ourselves that when the world opened back up again, we would travel. Really travel. Take those trips we have talked wistfully about for years but never made the commitment and reservations.

As traumatic as The Covid Years were, I am grateful that they inspired us to finally chase some dreams. This trip was three dreams come true…and more.

This lion is in the main courtyard of the museum.
He quickly became a landmark. His chin broke 
off somewhere along the way (he's from 350-200 BC), 
giving him a "durrrr" expression. He was henceforth
known as The Durr Lion. I miss him.