Can Life be Anymore Amazing?

July 10-13, 2007

These last few days have been packed!

I went to the British Museum with Mom and Merrily, and I could absolutely live there and be fine with it. It holds over seventy thousand exhibitions across two and a half miles of corridors. We focused on the Egyptian sections, the Elgin Marbles, Mesopotamia, Ancient Celts, and the Sutton Ho Exhibit. My favorite pieces are still the Rosetta Stone, which caused the deciphering of ancient hieroglyphics, and the papyri containing the Weighing of the Heart Ceremony, an ancient ritual from the Book of the Dead that is supposed to occur in the afterlife, in the Egyptian sections. The Elgin Marbles are reliefs and statues chopped off the Pantheon by Elgin, a British curator/lord/whatever who went to Greece and took them. They are absolutely beautiful, especially the carving of the dresses and robes--it looks like they're about to start flowing! From there we headed through the Mesopotamia section to the Celts, where we saw intricate belt buckles and weaponry; the Sutton Ho exhibit finished, which contains remnants from elaborate graves found near Sutton. It was amazing, and I could spend several days there easily.

From there we headed straight to Evensong at St. Paul's Cathedral, and we walked right through the crowds and straight under the dome. We sat under its painted beauty for an hour, listening to a wonderful men's choir sing praises and beauties to the Lord. A short walk across the Millennium Bridge found us at the Globe Theatre, where we saw Love's Labour's Lost, a comedy about a court that forsworn love and women only to do everything in its power to get women to fall in love. It was hilarious, and the actors ran through the groundlings and jumped off the stage all night! If you ever get a chance to go to the Globe, do so--you won't regret it.

The next day I got my phone fixed, which I can't wait to use--you don't realize how much you miss a phone until it's gone! We tried to see Macbeth that night at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, but delays on the Circle line saw us fifteen minutes late. Tricia and I ended up walking through Regent's Park for about an hour (Bend It Like Beckham, anyone?) before heading back and having a tea party in my room.

Thursday was a very full day. We had a day trip to Canterbury, and what a cathedral! Its gothic arches rose to the dusky ceiling in fan vaulting, and the graves were intricately carved. The crypt beneath still had its original Romanesque architecture! We recited Chaucer's opening eighteen lines there, and I felt very accomplished as a Meredith woman right then. I got lost on my way back to the bus from a ridiculously silly exhibit about the Canterbury Tales that everyone should go to at least once, and then we headed to the shore at Broadstairs. The beach was absolutely beautiful, and the white chalk cliffs loomed behind us as we numbed our feet in the English Channel--France peeked at us from the horizon. I had a cup of hot tea on the beach, and we relaxed and watched little children build sand castles and play with seaweed.

The best part of the day came that night, though--at 8:40 we headed into the Odeon Theatre at Liecester Square, home of countless film premiers, and saw Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix!!! I thought I was going to explode with excitement! The action and graphics were absolutely amazing, and Daniel Radcliffe and Michael Gambon's acting was superb. Tickets are really expensive here--the equivalent of about $26--so I plan to go a lot when I get home after August 6th. Anyone up for an adventure?