Parliament, Mummies and the Eye

Today we decided we’d figure out the underground.  Down three blocks to the Notting Hill underground but not before the girls and Shan caught their eyes on a few cool little shops.  So after a short delay and a few new bags to carry we were off.  First stop the British Museum.  Found our way in and Felix had told me that we had to see the mummy exhibit.  Figured we weren’t going to Egypt so this was the next best thing.  The museum was amazing.  We started with the visiting mummy exhibit where they have a 3500 BC “man in the sand”.  This is the oldest reported

mummified remains known and the desert did it!  I managed to get one photo taken before I was told that photos couldn’t be taken.  There  were a number of other mummies, one of Tanut who I’ve heard of from reading Wilber Smith novels.  Also a palace singer, temple guard and a young boy that was two years old.  They have done CT scans on the bodies and explain it all in the exhibit.  Well worth seeing if any of you ever get a chance.

Can you spot the girls in the inner court of the British Museum?

Outside there is a ton of Egyptian sarcophagus’, temple statues, guards and other crazy stone carvings.  They even have the Rosetta stone on exhibit here!  Its crazy as most of this stuff is BC with some beingn 1500 years old.  Its in incredible shape and a lot of it you can still read the script.  Not like I’d know what any of it said but it was truly impressive.  I managed to  get a bunch of photos but could tell I was the only one still super keen so I had my time.  It was time to go hit the next spot so back to the underground.

The next stop was St. Paul’s Cathedral....

WoW.  What an impressive building.  We went in to check it out but again, we were told no photos inside.  It was pretty cool hanging out checking out the detail in the stone carvings.  Amazing to think this work was completed 100’s of years ago and they didn’t have all the fancy carving tools that we have now.  The whole thing is millions of works of art.  Shannon found out it takes millions of pounds to maintain the building every year.  Much of the outside is in some kind of restoration process.

From there it was a walk across the Thames River by the Tate Modern but we didn’t have quite enough time to hit that.  Down river Alyssa has been dying to check out the London Eye.  The line wasn’t too long so her and I decided to go and leave Jenna and Shan to hang out on the grass.  The views from the top of the Eye was stunning and sure gave you a good feel of the city.  I was amazed at how many cranes there are building in the downtown core.  Probably 50 to 80 cranes dotted the skyline.  Alyssa was told to take lots of photos up there and she definitely did that!  All I could hear was the shutter clicking away the whole time!  One big photo shoot but I’ve got to say she’s taken some amazing photos on this trip already.

Parliament, Big Ben and the London Eye in the background.

Off the Eye and we passed Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, definitely a must see in London.  Just missed Westminster Abby but Shannon made it into the gift shop to see some photos of what the inside looks like.  I hate to say it but there are so many old incredible buildings that they almost start looking similar!  Still extremely impressive.  Back to the underground and back to Notting Hill for dinner.  I do have to say I’m done with fries for a while, the Brits have fries with everything.  I’m really craving a salad at the moment and no more bread.  We’ll maybe a bit in France. 

So tonight is the big decision on whether to blast off for France tomorrow.  I’ve been looking at different options over the last few days but discovered if we wanted a EuroRail pass we should have bought it in Canada (as we were told)... lesson learned.  So it looks like a bus to Calais through the tunnel and then some regional trains through France.  At first we were thinking of blasting through to Arras, near Vimy Ridge but the schedules make that a really long day.  It’ll make life a lot easier for us all to do it in two days, so here we come Calais.