journal journeys iii: Room 469, St. Giles Hotel, London

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Room 469, St. Giles Hotel, London

Another rainy day.

It was already raining when we set out for what I consider the highlight of this holiday - the British Museum. Even though it was very near the hotel, we still had lots of trouble finding it.

When we finally entered the large, bright and airy circular atrium, it turned out that the exhibits would not open till 10 a.m., which was 15 min away.

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So I wandered around the centre of the atrium (where most of the gift shops were), squinting through the glass at all the tempting souvenirs on sale - there were guidebooks, keychains, T-shirts, stationery...even purple British Museum teddy bears and stuffed pharaoh dolls...yes, very tempting indeed...

The first thing I did when 10 a.m. finally rolled round (actually I lost track of time staring at all the souvenirs), was to queue up and purchase the museum's souvenir guidebook for ₤6.

Then I could finally start viewing the exhibits. It seems that everyone in London spends their Sundays at the museum (which I don't blame them, especially since entry is free), including tourists. There was a steady stream of people entering the museum, and about half seemed to be crammed into the Ancient Egypt room, where the Rosetta Stone, to my delight, was the very first exhibit.

What is the Rosetta Stone? You can save the above picture and zoom in to read the left poster.

NOT to my delight, however, were the crowds of people pressing their noses to the glass to get a good look at the inscriptions - and thus making it extremely difficult to get a clear shot of the stone.

I finally accepted that I would never get a moment to stand right in front of the glass case and gape at the display, so I moved on to the other exhibits.

In the Ancient Egypt scupltures room there seemed to be a lot of:

1) Sarcophagi

2) Mounted inscriptions

...and 3) The occasional carved head, including a colossal one with its remaining colossal fist

Other interesting exhibits included a king list with rows of carved cartouches, a giant sculpture of a scarab beetle, as well as part of the Sphinx's beard!

Next we moved on to the Near East room, which was lined with many friezes from Nineveh and Nimrud.

Two highlights of the section included the giant "winged human-headed lions" which once guarded the entrance to a palace, as well as a recreation of the massive Balawat gates.

There were also many cuneiform inscriptions which, now that I've seen them in real life, makes me wonder how anyone - modern or ancient - managed to read them!

I was hoping to find friezes from Persepolis, but I didn't see any.

After that we entered the Ancient Greece exhibits, which ranged from Minoan and Mycenaen pottery to tons of classical Greek statues (most of them, sadly, headless).

Other interesting exhibits included the massive Nereid Monument, as well as what seemed like endless friezes from the Parthenon.

Then we left that particular area of the ground floor. I was in the Native America/Oceania room long enough to smile up at an Easter Island statue, though.

Then we went up the South Stairs, which were near the entrance.

This was taken when we first entered the museum, hence the barrier.

Upstairs I found the Britain and Europe rooms, which started off with late antiquity to medieval artefacts, with lots of elaborate jewellery and some early Christian carvings.

Highlights of that particular exhibition included the Sutton Hoo hoard with its famous helmet (the one on the cover of my Usborne Encyclopedia of World History), as well as the Lewis Chessmen, which the life-sized chess set in the movie Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was based on.

Then we moved back in time to Roman Britain, which contained many wonderful mosaics and stone carvings (including tombstones) that were uncovered around Britain. Also on display was a collection of gold torcs (which are large heavy necklaces).

The final Europe section was Prehistoric Europe, which I don't remember much of because I wandered off after seeing the Lindow Man (whose body was preserved in a peat bog after he died a violent death - probably a ritual sacrifice).

Then I was in another corridor and faced with the choice of Egyptian Prints and more Near East finds. I chose the Near East exhibits, and was certainly not disappointed - other than some famous artefacts from Ur, there were also remnants of Babylon's Ishtar gate...and the Persepolis friezes!

Finally I realised that we had spent more than 4 hours in the museum and had to hurry to the city centre before the shops closed at 6 p.m. (yes, they close at 6 p.m. on Sundays - how depressing). So I made a beeline for the children's shop, where there were many affordable replicas.

I picked out a Rosetta Stone keychain for myself, as well as various British Museum keychains and pins. I added to my basket an assortment of bookmarks, a replica Celtic knot necklace, a replica two-piece Norman coin set, Egyptian charm pebbles...

...then I got to the cashier and found out, to my horror, that the total bill was ₤31! And the most expensive item (the necklace) was only ₤3.99! I only had ₤15 with me, but luckily I could pay in Euros, which I had quite a lot remaining.

And I still hadn't purchased any postcards! I grabbed some from the museum bookshop (decided not to spend more money buying books) and then we could finally leave.

We managed to visit many stores, including H&M, NEXT, Bershka and Zara (Barcelona is much cheaper. Actually, even Singapore is cheaper).

After more walking, we finally came across one of my old haunts, Hamleys - the five-storey toy wonderland. It was still as crowded as I had remembered it. Instead of browsing around the Barbie or games section, this time I lingered around the ground floor, where all the stuffed toys are.

Finally found my UK-exclusive Peter Rabbit Beanie Baby (which was extraordinarily expensive for a Beanie Baby, or I would've bought his friends too).

Then I headed to the top floor cafe for a late "lunch" of blueberry sourdough pancakes drenched in maple syrup.

After that we made our way back to the hotel, during which we discovered that my other old haunt, the Disney store, was sadly no more.

Later on, we headed to Chinatown and stumbled upon the Chinatown branch of last night's restaurant, where I had another bowl of hot and sour soup and a GIANT plate of seafood fried noodles.