A Tale of Two Musuems

A much cooler day today: delicious cool fresh air and partly cloudy all day, even a bit of a breeze. It felt like we were at the beach. The high was maybe 18.

We split up for breakfast, Kate and the boys going to the hostel's cafeteria while I went to two bakeries across the street from the hostel, L'Express and deGustubus.

Then into the Underground with Galen our navigator, and off to the Victoria and Albert Museum. He took us first east, to Bank, because he wanted to check out the walk through the long tunnel to Monument. Thence west to South Kensington station, and the museum. Neither boy was too keen about this outing, so we set a tone of exploring at random, and getting sidetracked by anything interesting we saw. In fact we found some good nude statues, some Islamic art (my favourite), Grace Kelly's dresses (for Kate), the courtyard (to eat a snack), the gold and silver and mosaic (wow--snuffboxes!), funky modern design (found our stupid, loud Dyson vacuum cleaner in the collection), jewelry (because it was on the way back to the front door) and mediaeval and renaissance (also on the way out of the museum).

Next Galen's plan called for us to ride the #14 bus to Cambridge Circus. We shared the back of the bus on the top floor with an Italian family. We'd left our maps behind so we didn't know where Cambridge Circus was, but when we go to Totenham Court Road we knew we'd gone too far and so got off. Walked down Charing Cross (looking for the Leaky Cauldron, but not finding it). Boys were hungry and when we happened up on a Subway they pounced on it.

Kate and I got a chicken schwarma from a stand, but we could find nowhere to sit down and eat. We walked and walked, and finally in the Seven Dials district, a warren of tiny streets filled with shops and zooming vehicles, we found a picnic table in front a a sushi stall. The chicken schwarma was looking pretty gross now, with its big globs of garlic mayonnaise, so we dumped it, and bought some noodles instead. Which Will ate.

I now went for my long-awaited visit to Stanfords Maps, and London mecca for map-people, while Kate and the boys searched for food for her. While perusing the Central Asia section in the basement I overheard the lively conversations in the next aisle (Africa) of American students going to Uganda and eagerly buying maps. They were from Middlebury and reminded me of my NOLS students.

We walked up to the British Museum ("another museum for Dad") and went to see Egyptian things. Yet we got sidetracked by the "A History of the World in 100 Objects" theme, which led us through the ancient Britain rooms looking for specific objects. Quite interesting, but the boys were in museum meltdown, so we fetched up at the gift shop. They had terrific resources for home-educators and we bought some build-it-yourself buildings: a roman villa, a roman fort and a viking settlement. Plus a graphic novel of the Illiad and The Oddesey for Galen.

Our final transport goal for the day: ride the #8 to Bond St and then catch a specific #15 bus, a heritage Routemaster--the old, original London double decker bus--home. This was for Will who had seen these busses go by and desperately wanted to ride one. They only run occasionally on the #9 and #15 routes. Alas, we waited and waited in a bus shelter on Regent St., but as rush hour waxed around us we saw many #15's, but they were all the "new" buses. After 45 minutes Will acceded we could wait no longer, and we got on one.

Arrived home tired! Wireless internet broken in the hostel, so no post.