EUR11 - Day 13 - London

by Jeffrey Dale Starr



Since today was our last full day in Europe, we decided to treat ourselves to room service for breakfast. 'The Full English', as they say.



After breakfast we headed over to the famed British Museum, probably the greatest archeological museum in the world.



One of the first things we saw was the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone is an Ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis, Egypt in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek. Because it presents essentially the same text in all three scripts (with some minor differences between them), it provided the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs.



Human-headed, winged bull and genie from Assyria.



One of many rooms containing Assyrian friezes portraying the aggressive lion hunting and military ruthlessness of the 7th-century B.C.E. world power.



When looking at Greek antiquities, I saw this horse head that looked really familiar. Then I realized it was pictured on the cover of the Wire album, "A Bell Is A Cup Until It Is Struck".



Terracotta foundation document, from Nineveh 694 BCE. This is inscribed with a record of Sennacherib's campaigns, including his siege of Jerusalem in 701 BCE.



In the Egyptian wing, there were a lot of mummies. I was most fascinated with these cat mummies!



The Cyrus Cylinder. Describes how Persian king Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon in 539 BCE and returned deported people to their homes.




After the museum, we decided to get a nice English lunch at a nearby pub named The Plough.



Fish and chips, mashed peas, and a lovely beer called London Glory. Ahhhh.



After lunch we took a short walk to Covent Garden.



Starrina found a cute shirt with a cute lamb on it.



We returned to a candy shop we found on a previous visit to London.



I'm making this corny face for Starr's benefit. She can't stand violet-flavored candy and I love it.



We keep walking past this amazing dress at Harvey Nichols when we travel from the Underground station to our hotel. It's by Alexander McQueen and is made entirely of feathers. Looks really cool in person.



One final piece of foreign candy before closing out the European Vacation portion of my blog. A funny claim on the wrapper - this was the first candy to go to the top of Mt. Everest. Apparently, Edmund Hillary had some of this stuff on him. I guess that's a selling point.


Tomorrow - heading home. Thanks to everyone for reading!

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Jeffrey Dale Starr is a Dallas-based Expressionist oil painter who concentrates on themes of Japan, Dreams, Europe, Texas and California. His work can be found in private and public collections around the world.

http://www.jeffreydalestarr.com/