Summer 2011 #8 Class Trip to the British Museum

The great transport scheme (love the use of "scheme" here to mean any kind of "plan") of London. First half hour is free. Time your riding between these bike sites and you can ride a long time for nothing.

Some of the wonderful facades of flats along Great Russell Street where the British Museum is.

Maybe the greatest of all the museums in the world. In the 18th and 19th centuries especially the Brits scooped up natural and historical treasures from all of the world, which they mostly ruled anyway.

The modern and spectacular courtyard.

The Rosetta Stone. Always a mob in front of it. Unearthed during Napoleon's occupation of Egypt, it made possible the translation of hieroglyphics. Kids today probably think Rosetta Stone is just the name of the computer language program they see advertised on TV.

The ancient Egyptians did like large monumental sculpture.

Hieroglyphics on a coffin. I think it says, "I am somebody really important, and I expect to be immortal and live in a museum where lots of tourists will come every day and look at me."

Persian wall panel. Shows a bunch of warriors in boats. They look seriously overloaded and probably sank right after this. (Probably need to click and enlarge to see the details.)

Guardians of ancient Middle eastern city gates. How did the Brits manage to cart all this stuff back to London?

Ancient Hellenistic gold jewelry. Pretty impressive work. Loved looking at it and realizing that the earrings work just like their modern descendants 2500 years later.

Pop on that chunk of gold and head to the feast.

Great emphassis on realism in Greek sculpture.

The Parthenon Room with the Elgin Marbles, the sculptures and friezes from the Parthenon in Athens. They and their setting are amazing to see. The plaster casts in the Parthenon

replica in Nashville were made directly from these originals.

A piece of a panel showing a sacrificial procession--inspiration for the line in Keats' "Ode on A Grecian Urn" in which he describes a similar procession: "A heifer lowing at the skies. . . . "

Here's for Jamie and me. We both read the 2009 Tracy Chevalier historical novel Remarkable Creatures. It's about an uneducated woman named Mary Anning who became one of the most famous fossil hunters at the time science was just beginning to understand what fossils were. As the novel mentions, one of them was sold to the British Museum. I was wandering in the Enlightenment Room, and there it was! My own little fossil discovery.

Mary's find.

An 18th century orrery, a mechanical model of the solar system. It could demonstrate the relative motions of the known planets and moons and their relation to the sun.

Celtic treasure hords. They get dug up in burial mounds in England. These "grave goods" of gold and silver went into the ground with the bodies.

A torc, two pounds of solid gold.

A guy who fell in a bog a very long time ago and got himself preserved.

Roman jewelry from the time about 2000 years ago when Britain was a Roman province. There are many Roman ruins throughout England.

The most famous burial mound found in England was Sutton Hoo. What's left of an Anglo Saxon helmet is pictured in lots of textbooks.

The Portland Font, baptismal font of 22 kt gold, made in the late 1700's for the Duke of Portland.
The 18th century was a grand time for silver and goldsmiths.

One room is the history of clocks and watches. This one has a litle ball that takes one minute to run though a set of grooves, then the dial moves and it tips the platfform and runs back. It's in the video.

The chronometer used on the HMS Beagle, the ship Charles Darwin was on in his great voyage of discovery that led to a revolution in biology.

An example of early Egyptian "natural" preservation by the dry sands and low humidity of the time.

Canopic jars. The Egyptians put the visera of people in them after removing them for the mummification process.

The Egyptians apparently mummified pretty much anything and everything. "Memset, where's your little brother. I told you to watch him." "uhhhh"

Here's the clock in motion. The dial on the right changes with each cycle.

Summer 2011 #7 Portobello Road and Hampstead Heath Area

Every Saturday for blocks and blocks the famous Portobello Road Market is open for business.

The open-air stalls sell anything you could imagine, and there are equally interesting stores that are there behind the stalls in the street. Go early or face wall-to-wall people.

One of the landmark businesses. And below you can get a taste of what can be found there.

Vintage sewing machine, anyone?

This is my guy. I buy secondhand silver pieces from him when I go to the market. You might not think it to look at him, but he does know his stuff.

After many blocks of things to buy come the food sections--also most anything you could want.

Had to take some pastry back to the room for later.

And if you like street performers with your shopping, here's a sample.

I took my loot back to campus and set out through Hampstead Village to go to Highgate and the Hampstead Heath. Stopped by the Keats' House where the poet John Keats lived for a couple of years as he wrote most of his best known poems.

Keats is my favorite poet and died very young of TB. He got engaged to Fanny Brawne whose family shared half the house. They got engaged, but Keats grew worst and left to go to Italy where he died. They have one of his love letters here as well as the ring he gave her. She wore it the rest of her life.

Copy of the Keats death mask.

One of his most famous poems is the "Ode to a Nightingale," which he wrote sitting under an ancestor of this tree.

Then I walked into Hampstead Heath, a huge park and nature area of about 800 acres. It's also one of the highest areas in London. This view is from Parliament Hill, and you can see all the way to St. Paul's Cathedral and beyond.

Here you can see St. Paul's to the left of the tall building called "The Shard" for its similarity to pieces of broken glass standing up.

This is at the wildlife pond. There is also the Women's Bathing Pond, the Men's Bathing Pond, the Boat Sailing Pond, etc.

Highgate Village at the top of the Heath was and is very exclusive. Long ago, when this was far outside the city, the wealthy came up here for the clean air and the views and built their country houses. Samuel Taylor Coleridge came here for the last 11 years of his life to live with Dr. Gillman who helped him control his opium habit. Coleridge became known as the Sage of Highgate, and all the intellectuals of the day came calling.

Here's the house, and I just read that it was sold within the past year to Kate Moss for about 8 million pounds.

As I walked along, I came across a wedding party posing for the after-the-ceremony pictures in front of a church, so I joined in and took pictures, too. I'm pretty certain this guy is the father of the bride. He's probably just happy that it's all over.

Now that's a limo for you.

Then on to St. Michael's where Coleridge is buried. I'd never been able to get in before, and I wanted to see it--and the doors were open. I was practically up to the door when I heard singing and could see the minister at the front. Can you beat that? Having a religious service in a church when I wanted to sightsee.

What a lucky discovery. In 1865 baroness Burdett-Coutts (Yep. That's the name.) comissioned Holly Village, a collection of houses and cottages behind this gate house and walls. It is all done in the over-the-top Victorian Gothic style. If there was a place to put an ornament, they did it. It was literally the first gated community in London. The two sculptured figures are of the baroness.

I shot this through the gate of one of the houses.

Can we all say, "Too much, class"?

On back through Hampstead Village. Look, a baby car. I kept expecting to see clowns start piling out of it. Instead, a little old lady got in and peeled out.

Hampstead has more millionaires than any other section of London. All of which means that if you get hit by a car around here, it will likely be by a Bentley or a Porche.

The famous crepe stand that we all love. Two women stand in there speaking French nonstop to each other and turning out the most delicious crepes you ever tasted. Today mine was banana, nuts, maple syrup, and cream.