A week in London

These are places we’ve heard about for years like Big Ben, Tower Bridge, and Westminster Abbey

and people we’ve heard about for years like Shakespeare, George Washington, Mr. Bean,

Mary Poppins and Princess Diana.

We got to see the interior of 13th century Westminster Abbey during the 10am Sunday service. At other times they want 30 gbp/person to get in. It’s a fairly standard Gothic cathedral which we saw many times in Portugal though construction was about a century later.

Southwark Cathedral, also Gothic, doesn’t charge an entrance fee,

but we bit the bullet (26 gbp/person) for 17th century baroque St. Paul’s Cathedral.

The dome is filled with scenes from Paul’s life including the earthquake escape from jail which I found so fantastic at Philippi.

The view from outside the dome was fantastic in a different way.

The UK does things backwards from many countries — you pay to get into churches, but many museums have no entrance fee. We spent two days at the British Museum. One of my first goals at the British Museum was to see the tombs from Xanthos, a site I’ve visited twice. The big missing monumental tomb at Xanthos is, of course, the Nereid Monument.

Payava’s sarcophagus tomb was found up the hill from the Nereid Monument.

The original location is, I believe, here.

We can see (a copy of) the frieze around the top of the Harpy Tomb (aka Tomb of Kybernis) in the left in this photo,

but it’s easier to see the detail at the British Museum.

The Mausoleum at Halikarnassos in modern Bodrum is not an interesting site to visit.

Would it be any better if the stone lions were on site?

Knidos is missing this larger stone lion. Ferda and I have both been to Datça twice but haven’t bothered making the trip to Knidos. Now we’ve seen the lion!

In Tehran we saw a copy of the Cyrus Cylinder. The British Museum has the original.

The plaster casts from Persepolis are now in better shape than the originals which are exposed to the elements. Reminiscent of the incredible Persepolis carvings was the exhibit from Assyrian Nimrud (near modern Mosul). You enter via a gate of stone lions, reminding me of what the Hittites were doing some 400 years earlier.

The carvings depict a royal lion hunting scene, including bringing the lion to the hunting grounds, chasing it with a chariot, and killing it.

One of the pieces that I was most excited to see at the British Museum was the (double-sided!) carved marble tombstone from Cambay (aka Khambhat), Gujarat. For about two hundred years (1300-1500 CE) a workshop in Cambay sent these tombstones all over the Indian Ocean littoral. I’ve been reading about pre-Portuguese Indian Ocean trading. These tombstones have turned up from Kilwa to Kerala, Yemen (this one), Oman, as far away as Sumatra and Java.

We spent two days at the museum, and I’m sure we barely scratched the surface. I’ll end with this Roman vase, “one of the finest surviving pieces of Roman glass” according to the sign.

On the Cambay tombstone theme Ferda and I made an effort to get to the Victoria and Albert Museum because I knew they had two pieces from Cambay in their collection. Doh! They’re on display in Muscat, and somehow I missed them when I was there. Contemporary with the Cambay workshop are these tiles from Tomb of Buyanquli Khan (outskirts of Bukhara, Uzbekistan).

The V&A has impressive collection of plaster casts. Ferda and I have never been to Florence, but now we’ve seen David.

We’ve never been to Rome, but now we’ve seen Trajan’s Column.

Remember when I said that (a part of) the minbar at Sultan Qaytbay Mausoleum had been stolen? I didn’t find it here at the V&A, did?! 😉 Same patron…

Another museum that Ferda and I enjoyed was the National Gallery. I’ll just show three of my favorites.

Mostly we walked around London. We used the tube one day, buses a couple days, and rented bicycles one day. Bikes are the best of course.

I guess that’s about it. What else do you expect from a week in London? The bus trip from Edinburgh took about 12 hours with green rolling agriculture fields the whole way. Not terribly exciting, but I was glad to see it. The bus took us into the center of both Newcastle and Leeds. Neither looked so amazing, but I reminded myself that few cities look nice when you come in and out on busy main roads.

The reason we used the tube one day was to visit Kew Gardens which was about 17km west of where we were staying at Elephant and Castle. I’ll end with photos of our day at Kew.