Day 1 in London

Enjoyed a free breakfast of toast and rice bubbles down the road at the other St Christophers... the hostel has two venues on the same street, about 2 minutes apart.

After that I posted my first post on this new blog... yay.

Walked across London Bridge and then after an initial wrong turn headed west towards Saint Paul's Cathedral. You know the one, big dome, in the background in every movie featuring London... just like the Eiffel Tower is in the background from every angle in Paris, or the Harbour Bridge in Water Rats...

Saint Paul's is big. So big that to get a shot of the facade and include the dome, you have to stand across the street and down the road. On my way back to the hostel in the afternoon, I got a great shot during a moment when the sun happened to be out.

A cold, drizzly day it was for the most part. I found a phone booth, and not having figured out my phonecard yet, I tried a collect call home. The operator said it wouldn't do it for that number, so I gave them my credit card number instead... it wouldn't go through. The operator repeated mum and dad's phone number back to me, but he got one number wrong. Maybe that's why the collect call didn't work... anyhoo, I gave him the right number and it worked - spoke with Mum for a few minutes and let her know I'd actually made it to London. She said if I was near St Pauls, I'd be near Australia House - but she didn't know the address.

After that I continued walking along the road, and stopped into a WHSmith and bought a pocket A-Z for £3.95. This was able to tell me I was on Fleet Street, and if I kept walking I would pass the Nigerian Embassy, and would also come across Australia House at a fork in the road. From there it was a short trip northward to the British Museum.

I picked up some leaflets at Australia House and made my way up Kingsway in the general direction of the Museum. I say general direction because it was at this point that my pocket A-Z decided to mysteriously vanish out of my coat pocket. I retraced my steps, going back to a couple shops I'd lingered in without actually purchasing (a sandwich shop - the smell was enough to cure my hunger; and a newsagent that didn't have a logic problems book)... but no luck. My £3.95 A-Z was missing. That's about 800 yen, or A$10.

The British Museum was AMAZING. The place was HUGE. I arrived just in time to join a 45-minute guided tour of the Renaissance Hall - a room restored to its 18th Century appearance, with books and Greek vases on all walls... display cabinets of African, American, Asian and European artifacts... sketches by Sir Joseph Banks... fossils... all kinds of objects from the Museum's collection, as well as a few items on loan from the Natural History Museum, Science Museum and the House Of Commons Library. Very fascinating look at the history of the museums, and of "collections" in general.

There was a very interesting piece in the African section of the museum, a giant thing called "Man's Cloth". Made by a Ghanaian artist, it was a kind of impressionistic kente-cloth. Made out of the plastic and alfoil bits at the top of wine or gin bottles. Fascinating. From further back it did look a bit like a piece of woven cloth.

Another amazing thing was the Ancient Near East section. Walking along, viewing wall carvings... the Assyrian siege of Lachish, with Jewish families walking off into exile... Asshurbanipal on a lion hunt. Wall friezes from the palaces of Nimrud and Nineveh (modern Mosul - on the news a lot lately). I wonder what Shalmaneser and his heirs would think if they could see their house walls on display in a foreign country today?

Well, that's all for today. My time is soon to be up on this computer.

Glennjamin In Europe