Wednesday is a leisure day in the smoke - except there's no sign of smoke as the day began with bright sunshine and clear skies. So warm in fact that her indoors went out for the day with no coat - very unusual.
The tube took us along two line, Jubilee and Piccadilly to Russell Square and onward by foot through the very picturesque Square to the British Museum. In may ways 'British' is a strange name for it really because the museum gives a huge amount of its space to everything except British. There's lots of Africa, Europe, Egypt, Greece, Roman, Asian, Middle East but not a lot of 'British.' If you want British, visit other museums and some of the local museums in the UK tell us much more about our heritage that the British Museum which is a real shame.
Why is it a shame? Because the vast majority of visitors by a long way were not British at all and I wonder what they expected to see - certainly not a lot of this country's dim and distant past. Perhaps a change of name might be appropriate. Nevertheless, I can't take away from the place that the exhibitions are immense in quantity and quality and we were there about three and a half hours, and could have spent more.
Spot the philosophers.
The highlights were the Egyptian funerary things and some of the jewelry both from home and abroad. The Greek things, statues, buildings etc were fabulous and if you are rich, you could buy a statue of 'David' for £10,000 from the shop along with other equally as expensive replicas.
A 'problem' on the tube, which was not explained to us just delayed our journey back to the hotel, but we made it back in time for an early tea and then onward to the Lyceum Theatre to see The Lion King. We were picked up at the hotel by 'Barry' who collected is at the end of the show in a large black BMW. We felt like royalty.
The Lion King was an extraordinary experience of colour, song, wit, strong characters telling a strong story with singing of the most exquisite beauty. The theme was strongly African as you would imagine, with different lyrics and music from the film, but it still retains the Tim Rice and Elton John magic enhanced by the wonderful African harmonies. This is thoroughly recommended and will be enjoyed by all ages.
By the way - the theatre itself inside is spectacular in its old fashioned design with carvings all over the place, on boxes, on the ceilings, the walls - stunning. Unfortunately, it was too dark to capture it on my camera.
A long, tiring, but entirely satisfying day.
Chat soon
Ta-ra.
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