Londontown - Fourth and Final Part

Saturday, June 29th

A little bit of a late start to the morning but we set out to Leicester Square to buy tickets for a show that evening - our selection: The Woman in Black, a thriller play (and has been turned into a movie) - once that's done, we find a cafe nearby and finally have an English breakfast, something Josh has been hankering for all week. Afterward, we set off to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. Upon arrival, we see thousands of people gathered and they must have been waiting for hours. The occasion itself begins at 11:30 am. Josh and I manage to get sort of okay spots near the gate. We each manage to jostle closer to the gate at separate but close points.

We can see the guards standing in formation, and then we hear (or rather, we see portions of the crowd turn and lift their cameras toward the road) the new guard marching in. I'm able to get one picture of this, but it's not great. Back at the wall, I can grab a few pictures, and I have a video of one guy with a flag marching around the standing formation. However, when the ceremony really gets going, my camera's battery died. I thought it still had juice left, but it was very disappointing. I happened to be standing in a fairly good spot to see guard leaving their posts and walking round to a door in the Palace but couldn't photograph any of it.

At the end of the ceremony, Josh and I got separated in the shuffle and we hadn't set up any sort of eventuality for this, so we just kept on our separate ways. I went back to our hostel to recharge my camera's battery for half an hour and hope it'll keep me going most of the day.

My next stop, the British Museum. I'd really been looking forward to going here, but Buckingham and the camera ate up so much time, I knew I'd only have a couple of hours there, especially if I wanted to see anything else afterward.

The Museum itself, upon entering, is very impressive. There is a wide open space that contains a bright dome and a large circular structure in the centre that holds the special exhibitions - the current one was on Pompeii and Herculaneum but I didn't want to pay extra for it.

My first stop was the Elgin Marbles, original pieces of the Parthenon that stands on the Acropolis in Athens. I've been there and to the Parthenon Museum where Greece would keep the marbles should they ever be returned; this museum has replicas of all the pieces that now sit in the British Museum. It was great to see the original pieces, and there were side rooms with information on the marbles, the Parthenon and descriptions of each.

I swing back around to see the Rosetta Stone, which is hard to miss because there is a constant throng of people standing around it. This is a large stone slab containing inscriptions of the same words in three different languages: Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic script and Greek. This was what allowed scholars to finally decipher hieroglyphs, which were previously a mystery.

Then, because I had so little time, I decided to visit the highlights. The little guide provided by the museum listed some, and my own guidebook had a couple of others. So I saw the Lewis Chessmen, so named because it was found on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, and it is a large, medieval set of chess that dates to the 12th century.
I went through a Middle East section and saw cylinder with cuneiform script that refers to Cyrus the Great and I'm pretty sure I learned about this one in school.
The Roman section had the Portland Vase, which is a gorgeous glass piece that has a blue background with white figures around. The detailing on it is very pretty.
I walked quickly to the Aztec section, and checked out the turquoise mosaic mask. It's a skeletal face made up of many pieces of turquoise, and it is very striking.
Another run through the Egyptian section turned up the famous broken statue of Ramesses II; only the head, chest and half an arm remains. This statue along with other damaged works was the inspiration for Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem, Ozymandias.

I had just enough time afterward to rush to the Sherlock Holmes Museum, located at Holmes' own address, 221b Baker Street. I got there at 5:00, and it closed at 6:00; there was a line-up but one of the employees (dressed as a maid of Holmes' time) said I might have enough time once I get through, and it doesn't take much time to look around. There was also a man dressed as an old-timey police officer standing at the door - it was he who let people in. Unfortunately.. my camera died again almost as soon as I stepped in, but I was able to get a couple of pictures. It was a cute little museum, filled with rooms that were made to either look like his home, or others that contained scenes and people from the stories.

After this, I headed straight back to the hostel and met with Josh there. It turns out he was at the British Museum the same time as I, but we missed each other entirely. We got ready for the show but were running low on time. The show began at 8:00, but it was already after 7:00. Taking the subway would take too long, so we tried for a taxi. It took several minutes, which made us antsier, but we finally found a free one. The driver was really amazing and got us to the front door about 5 minutes to showtime.

The Woman in Black is about a solicitor who attends the funeral of a client, and sees the form of a woman, all dressed in black, in the churchyard. His inquiries around town and his visits to the late client's home (to sort out her papers) serve to increase the mystery and the fear. The whole play is done by only two people, and is performed as a play within a play, so you had a young man who plays the younger version of this lawyer, and the old guy who plays the older version as well as every other character. It was really well-done, and very enjoyable. It was meant to be scary, and certainly there were some startling moments but neither Josh nor I were frightened. However, some people in the audience were really absorbed and definitely got shocked - it all added to the atmosphere, though.

We went for dinner at a Mexican restaurant afterward (or I did, Josh had already eaten earlier, so he accompanied me.) I had a tempura shrimp and sea bass taco, which was my first fish taco and was really delicious.

Back to the hostel, where I packed up my things and got ready to depart the next day. So ends my journey in England, and my next tales will finally tell of my time in Israel.