Last day in London, for now anyway. This damned cold is determined to stick with me and this morning it decided to make its presence known. I considered missing the museum and trudging back to Vanessa's place in Kent but curiosity and a love of all things ancient got me packed up and wandering down the street to the great British Museum. Best Decision Ever!!
I want to live there in the museum, I want to be there every day to see all the things all the time! This place is beyond big, there is far too much to see in one day so I restricted myself to the ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman sections. I'm sure other patrons could hear me gasp as I took my first few steps into the Egyptian exhibit. Wow, just wow! Huge pieces from pyramids, entire walls of hieroglyphics, sarcophagi, mummies(!!), statues and - this just blew my mind - THE Rosetta Stone, the actual stone that was used to decider hieroglyphs, right there in front of me! Realising that all these pieces were around at the time of Tutankhamen and many before and after him, and now I was looking at them was almost too hard to get my head around. This is the best place in the world! All this and still the Greek and Roman areas to see as well, yep, this is heaven.
Pieces from the Parthanon, burial stones, columns, busts, coins, sculptures, voting 'tickets', masks, instruments, mosaics and vases...oh so many vases. Year 13 Classical Studies often do Greek Vase Painting as one of their topics, mine did, and here, in rooms dedicated to ceramics were more vases than I could have dreamed of. Black, red and white figure vases, amphorae, kraters, lekythos, cups and more. Then I saw it; one of the actual vases I taught my students about, the Berlin Painter Volute Krater! It was actually there, in a case less than half a metre from me. The real thing! I was already quite overwhelmed but this was almost unfathomable to me and all of a sudden there were tears in my eyes. Luckily I managed to get myself under control before they fell all over my cheeks but still, I was grinning like a Cheshire Cat and couldn't stop walking around looking at every inch of it. I'm pretty sure the staff person in that room must have thought I'd lost my mind so I tried to contain my excitement so she didn't think I was a complete looney and kick me out.
By now I'd already been there for about 3 hours and still had about a two hour journey home ahead of me so I reluctantly left this magnificent place. I'll be back museum, I'll be back.
