May 6: More touristy stuff in London

Weeeell today certainly had interesting things in store for me. A trip to the famous British Museum!! But first off there was a brief visit to a little shopping are called Leadenhall. This place is really quaint. Very Victorian. Any new shops that open keep to the victorian facade, it's quite a delightful effect. Stopped at a cookie shop and had a delicious lemon cookie and a dark chocolate cookie along with a great coffee, made my morning I tell you. Here's a couple of shots.

The cookie was thoroughly wicked.. sooo rich. Oh, that's Ingrid holding the cookie (Thanks for being the hand model, Ingrid ;p). The coffee deserved special mention for being as good as one I'd made myself.






I think the sepia texture suits the Leadenhall market. The colour image refuses to rotate properly, so I'll fix that later.

Once satisified we made our way to the British Museum, but not before I picked up a new sim card and Ingrid went to grab a laptop that her friend had given her to sell. So we went looking for a shop to sell it and lo and behold we came upon Tottenham Court Rd which just so happens to have a string of PC stores along it... fancy that...unfortunately, the stores here wouldn't take the damn thing because it was an australian machine with an Australian power cable not to mention the fact that the battery was dead. Thats what you get for being dodgy.


On to the museum!!

After a wrong turn and past a nice little garden, we made it to the museum!

I must say that the museum is one of the most amazing places I have ever been to. I got caught up in the first section I visited, a theme room named Enlightenment. Filled with artifacts from all lover the world displayed in such a way to show the period of enlightenment in the 18th century.





Got stuck in there for an hour and a half. So that I wouldn't spend my whole time in just one room, I also explored the China exhibition and the Japan one.
I took an incredible number of pics here. I'll post up a few of my faves with a few words about them, else you'd be here all day and nothing would get done.







This is the Enlightenment exhibition, the room is amazing rich in decoration. The upper gallery level of th hall is lined with book shelves which are inaccessible but lend the room at quiet dignity and library like atmosphere. The display cabinets were spaced by more bookshelves filled with old books and such.















This is one of favourite pieces. It's a nautilus shell which has been cracked open and the inner coils picked out so that it resembles a knight's helmet. It is a phenomenal piece of work. The outside of the shell has been painted to show a naval battle scene.















This is the inside of a nautilus shell where it has begun to turn into a fossil. The inside spaces of the shell have begun to fill with crystals.











This is a gold filigree case used to hold a Goa stone, a supposed cure for poisons or some such. The workmanship on this thing is exquisite.











This is a Ming Dynasty china plate. The glazing is incredibly delicate and it's really big, wider than my head.













This is another favourite piece of Ming Dynasty china. One of the things I love about it is the writing. This piece of china is about 500 years old and you can see that the written form hasn't changed in that time. Of course the entire writing system was standardised 2000 years ago.





There are many more and all are as interesting as these ones. I'll add a link to my photobucket account to the main page so that people can browse at their leisure.

Now in an adjoining chamber, there was a display of ancient clocks. I'll show a couple here.





This clock is amazing, especially given its age. It's about 2-300 years old. It was designed to roll slowly down a long dinner table and belch fire and smoke every quarter hour while some small figures move along the quarter deck. This is a true piece of art.









This clock ran on a brilliant system. A ball bearing rolled along a grooved track machined into a metal plate on the bottom of the clock. It took 30 seconds to go from one side of the metal plate to the other side. At each side a bar bounced the ball back and triggered the plate to tilt. On the seconds face, the hand would make a half revolution marking 30 seconds. According to the display, the ball bearing covers 4000km a year.





In the same room but on the other side was a display about the pacific island cultures. One particular display really caught my eye. This is a pacific island, I forget which one, sword of manhood. When a boy reaches manhood, his father makes him a sword such as this one. It's made from wood with shark teeth bound onto the shafts using hair and coconut fibres. An amazing piece of work. I certainly wouldn't want to be hit by this ugly thing.




I'll leave this one at this point. I'll write a part 2 for this day else it would be WAY too long.