I walked to the British Museum, just off Oxford down a ways. The place is absolutely amazing. The building is impressive in itself. But then there are the 7 million objects in the collection. And, like all museums here, it's free.
They have it set up in a very interesting way as well, by doing it chronologically through history to an extent. I started in the Egyptian room, where the first thing you see is the Rosetta Stone. Down either wings are massive sculptures. The size of the artifacts are what really stood out to me. I feel like many museums have about one or two really big pieces, here every one was. I also went by the beard of the Sphinx, which was interesting.
From there I went through the Assyrian exhibit, where the walls where covered with hieroglyphs. It was rather impressive. They had some large statues as well.
Next was what I was most looking forward to, the Greek section. There is a lot of debate about the marble reliefs and states taken to the museum (legally) from the Parthenon in Athens and if they should go back to the New Acropolis Museum or not. They are a major attraction and the Brits argue that they surely helped to preserve them by taking them, which is true. I somehow feel that they should end up back in Athens, with the rest of the stuff so you can get a real feel for how great it was, but I don't think they're moving anytime soon. The artifacts were in surprisingly good condition for 2,000 years old and surviving a massive explosion. They were in my art history book, so I was pretty excited. And this made me more excited for Athens too.
I then went to the upper floors where they had all sorts of different things. Mummys, coins, the Sutton Hoo treasures (another art history feature), clocks, a Michaelangelo, you name it. This part wasn't as impressive to me, perhaps because they weren't as big, but I think another major reason is that downstairs, almost all the objects weren't behind glass. You couldn't touch them or anything, but it made them a lot more real.
After a couple hours I left and went to Starbucks across the street before I headed down passed Parliament and the Westminster Bridge to get to the Old Vic to try to get student tickets for a showing of "Complicit." They had some for that night, so I took it. I had a while to kill so I read the paper, went and bought a notebook, and hung out in a bookstore until it was time for the show to start.
My seat was in the front row of the dress circle, to the left of the stage. The theater was much smaller than I expected, probably 300 people at most, and set up in the round. The play was about a journalist revealing sources about torture post 9/11 in America. Sort of a Valerie Plume story. It was Richard Dreyfus playing the journalist, his wife, and his lawyer, intermixed with video clips of an interview shown throughout. Kevin Spacey directed it. It was alright, I didn't think the acting was that great, maybe two stars out of four.
The American group called and wanted me to go to a concert at Koko's, the 'cool' music venue in the city. It was only £5 and NME music night, so I figured why not. I met up with them and we just hung out. Turns out the show didn't start until around 11:45, and the tube stops running around midnight, so we left before the band even started playing. But we had a good time, so it was worth it. The venue is really cool, kind of a Riviera Theater vibe, just a little nicer.
Tomorrow I'm not really sure what I'll be doing, probably not too much in anticipation for Scotland. I have some work to do with that still.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment