My last day - The British Museum

I think we saved the best for last.  This is going to be a photo heavy entry one and I need to get it done quickly because I really need to pack.

My two areas of focus at the museum were the Ancient Egyptian stuff and the Greek stuff.  First, Egypt

Here is my old friend King Tut

This is the famous Rosetta Stone and this is a much better photo than the last one I took.  It's in a case now and you can get closer to it.

Look! A hugenormous scarab!

A mummy with a gold leaf mask, meaning she was a wealthy and important person.

And another poor anonymous type of mummy.  Of course, not all mummies were people.

Here are some cat mummies

A couple of canopic boxes (look it up...lol).

I love these little blue hippos.  I have a pair of reproduction ones that I hang on my Christmas tree.

This is a plaster cast reproduction from the inside of a tomb.  It is painted authentically and I just thought it was awesome.

urgh...battery is dying AGAIN.  Must recharge and post the Greek stuff in a bit.

Ok, I'm back (several days later) and I have the Greek photos and a bit more

This is the special gallery where the sculptures from the Parthenon are kept...otherwise known as the Elgin Marbles.

These are from the East Pediment showing the birth of Athena

These are from the West Pediment showing the contest between Athena and Poseidon over who would become the ruler of Athens and Attica.

A metope from the East Pediment

Detail from a frieze

Of course, there was a ton of other stuff to see in the British Museum, but my camera batteries died before I could record much more of it.  Silly gift shops carry film...but no batteries.

These are some Gnathian baby feeders....in the shapes of fish and rats..

King Mausolus and his wife/sister Artemisia from the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Just as I took this photo, the batteries in my camera were dying...I didn't get to take a picture of the enormous horse statue from there.

I did manage to trick it into taking one last photo.  This is an Easter Island statue (a smaller one if you know anything about the statues on Easter Island).  Then the batteries totally crapped out.

There was a lot more of the museum I saw and I have to say that I thought the King's Library section to be especially cool.  I felt like I was in a museum at the time of the Regency. I spent most of the day in the Museum and managed to make a large dent in the gift shop (as always).  I left just about closing time and got an ice cream from a truck out in front.

I then set out with my ice cream to find Forbidden Planet to check out what kind of Dr. Who and Red Dwarf goodies they might have.  I was bummed my batteries gave out or I'd have had my photo taken with the TARDIS they had in the middle of the store.  All the Dr. Who stuff was #11 with a couple of really expensive exceptions, so I got a pen with a floating TARDIS in it, a Cyberman army T-Shirt, and a couple of  other odds and ends.  I also purchased the ONLY Red Dwarf item in the store, which was a little plastic thingie with buttons that you push for the characters saying catch phrases from the show...my favorite is Ace Rimmer and his "Save me a kipper..." which I pushed several times.   This led to the guy at the till telling me about the new series coming out soon.  I joked that I was not going to hold my breath.

I got back on the tube and navigated my way back to High St. in Kensington so I could visit the Mother Ship again.  I got a couple of more packages of that stem ginger fudge...it was yummy.  I also got a couple of things for dinner and and ENORMOUS meringue for desert.  Oh, and a gift for someone....

Then back to the room to pack and clean.  Which took forever.  urgh.