Side Trips to Greece, Egypt and Italy

I took the kids to the British Museum to see the Egyptian and Greek artifacts.  With as horribly crowded as the Tower of London had been, I imagined we might not be able to stay long.  The kids’ tolerance for museums is directly proportional to the number of times they get jostled and shoved by strangers in crowds.

When we arrived, we tried to go directly to the Rosetta Stone.  However, there is a lovely gift shop across from it.  I learned long ago that buying the kids their “souvenir” early in the visit prevents them from asking for things all day long. 

With our detour completed, we headed into the crowded Rosetta Stone exhibit.

After the requisite man-handling, the girls got up front to take a look.   Then we went through the Egyptian galleries to the Elgin/Parthenon marbles.

Once again, the brilliance of the “buy their trinket early” strategy was evident.  I was able to stay in the Elgin galleries for half an hour.  I read the descriptions, contemplated the carvings and took photos to my heart’s content.  The kids were playing with their new pink sparkly journal and teddy bear.  Sure, they didn’t look at the artifacts, but after every museum we’ve seen and all the boring things I’ve dragged them to, I was okay with it.

The Egyptian galleries were a hit, as expected.  The girls are budding Egyptologists.

I loved the Greek sculptures.  They were more interesting in playing at that point.

I had forgotten how huge the Assyrian sculptures are.

This one still shows the guards’ playing board for a dice game.

 

The new interior boasts a gigantic, swirling spiral staircase that leads you up and down from wing to wing.  It feels incredibly space-inefficient and stylistically jumbled, jammed up against the neoclassical facade of the olde museume parts, but so marches progress, no?

 

To my delight, even the floors were full of fossils.