British Museum
And lo, we saved the biggest and best museum for last. The British Museum was the first grand museum in the world and contains priceless artifacts excavated, conquered, and stolen from countries across the globe. As such, there is an extensive search of all baggage upon entrance. The don’t want people trying to steal any artifacts back for their home country.
To the British Museum’s credit, the vast majority of exhibits are free of charge. And when you consider what happened to the Bamiyan Buddha statues, maybe it’s good the artifacts were taken and preserved for future generations before they could be blown up by radical iconoclasts.
More pictures inside after the jump.
This is the front of the museum.
Once inside, you see this beautiful glass ceiling.
This is one of the less grotesque mummies. I took pictures of some of the more skeletal and zombie-like ones as well, but have decided not to post them for now. Anyway, I wonder if this dude ever imagined he’d be resting in a glass case after death and be visited by billions of tourists.
Winnie next to a totem.
This fellow is Cupid, son of Venus and skilled marksman (most of the time).
The Rosetta Stone. If you don’t know what this is, go back to sixth grade.
A full samurai armor.
This is one of the many tablets they had on display from ancient Sumeria. This one details the great flood. Others talk about myths and legal matters.
A giant moai statue.
Greek pots depicting various scandals of the gods.
Looks English.
A giant horn.
Finally, here’s some Persian bling.
Inside the Tower of London
After seeing the British Museum, we made it down to the Tower of London just in time for the final tour with a Yeoman guide. We also saw the Crown Jewels, which contained the biggest diamond I’ve ever seen in my life. Below are some of the pictures. Unfortunately, we were unable to obtain pictures of the treasures.
Here’s a shot from within the fortress walls. There are actually two sets of walls, erected by different leaders over the centuries.
Here’s a shot of the Tower Bridge from inside the fortress.
This glass pillow is a monument to the people who lost their lives in this exact location in the courtyard. It used to be a block and axe. Severed heads would be placed on pikes on London Bridge as a warning to treasonous parties.
Here’s where the Crown Jewels are. Inside is heavy security and videos of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation day.
The central tower is called the White Tower. It has four turrets: three square, one round. Not sure what significance that is, but the Yeoman kept repeating it.
Here’s where the Yeomen Warders and their families live. To become a Yeoman Warder, you basically need to have served in the military for a very long time.
Henry VIII was a pretty fat man. We went inside to check out his armor collection, and some of the later ones were quite large. Also, we found the huge groin of the plate armors particularly amusing.
While waiting in line for the Crown Jewels, you can see some badass artillery on display.
Tate Modern
By the time we were kicked out of the Tower of London (around 4:30p) we made it back to the St. Paul’s stop and across the Millennium Bridge to the Tate Modern to check out a few floors of exhibits. Oh, modern art. Your art was the prettiest art of all the art.
This is the POPLIFE exhibit, which looks at pop culture. The frilly thing in the top-left corner is an anime girl with enormous breasts squirting a stream of milk.
We also took some other pictures of installations. But then, the guards told us not to. So we stopped.
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