1982 British Museum and the Theatre (7/9/1982)

Friday, July 9, 1982

Punk styling more in evidence in London, as our breakfast server has pink scarlet hair. Left at 8:30 to walk to Kings Road to wait for a bus. Lots of #49s coming around the corner, now finally a pair of #11s. Sent to the upper deck where a conductor charged us 40 pence/70 cents for a ticket, when I thought it would be 20 pence/35 cents for a “short hop.” However, a short hop is less than 3/4 mile, and Victoria Station is farther.

Bus ticket

As it was, we were dropped off at Sloane Square and had to walk around it, down Pimlico to Buckingham Palace Road to the station. We went to the Sealink offices to figure out our channel crossings, both for us to get to the Continent and for Sue to return for her flight home. She booked a jetfoil for her crossing back to the UK. Then we set off up Bridge Street to find a hotel for Sue’s return trip, finding the Elizabeth House of the YWCA near Warwick Square and booked a bed in a 3-person room including breakfast for 5 GBP/$9.
We paid 40 pence/70 cents to take the tube from Victoria to Green Park. We have seen interesting signs on and for the tube, such as assaulting the staff means life imprisonment, if you see an unattended package, treat it as if it contained a bomb, and no burkers or street musicians allowed in the corridors. We don’t know about the burkers, but there are street musicians in the corridors. There are signs warning against pickpockets everywhere. At Green Park we got off to walk down Piccadilly to the SNCF offices to wait in line to hand in our Eurail pass extension applications, then to wait another half hour to get them, paying an additional 44.70 GBP plus 2.50 GBP fee/$83. Walked over to the tube station at Piccadilly to the Travel Inquiry Office and booked ourselves on the London Transport Tour tomorrow to Greenwich for 13 GBP/$23. Continued to Trafalgar Square and Northumberland Avenue to find the Sherlock Holmes Pub. The numbering system was confusing, and actually there is also a Northumberland Street, but we found the place full of photos of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and of locations where the mysteries take place, and playbills. We went upstairs to sit next to “Holmes Study,” a cluttered room with a dummy in the window. The restaurant menu did not include what we were looking for, so we went downstairs to the pub for the steak and kidney pie to share, a half pint of lager for Sue and a Pepsi for me. We ate standing up with the locals.

Afterwards we walked up Charing Cross Road towards the British Museum (1823-1857 and still growing). It was oppressively hot. Admission to the museum was free, but we saw a sign saying something about checking bags, which we took to mean to deposit them in a cloakroom. A guard laughed when he saw us pulling out our money and documents, and told us we could take our backpacks with us, we just needed to have them searched. Oh, the English language is so difficult!

First to a special exhibit on excavations in Egypt showing artifacts and photos of the “who” and “what.” Next the Assyrian winged lions with human heads used as gate guards, lots of pieces of walls from the Assyrian city Nimrud, carvings with hieroglyphics, a small black obelisk, and other Western Asian artifacts. A guard readily pointed the way to the Rosetta stone, but we had to pass other items with hieroglyphics to distract us before we found the large black stone with inscriptions in three languages and alphabets, which has been the key for decoding many of the hieroglyphics. We zipped through the Egyptian sculpture in search of the Greek. Found the huge room with the Elgin Marbles with sculpture and friezes from the Parthenon and metopes (panels with relief sculpture), along with the marble horse head belonging to Selene, Greek goddess of the moon.
The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus or Tomb of Mausolus Room contained what was considered to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World according to the poem by the Greek Antipater of Sidon. Saw the Portland Vase (1-25 CE), an early example of cameo glass. The disk supporting it was on loan from Corning, NY! Zipped through the rest of the Roman artifacts, and headed up the main stairs to see a large Roman tiled floor. Passed through rooms of prehistoric, Greek and Roman bronzes and terracottas, and an exhibit of the image of Augustus (very consistent with the curling lock of hair on the forehead!).

Next the Sutton Hoo Ship Burial Treasures, where someone was buried in a ship filled with treasures by the Germanic tribes that settled in Britain after the Romans. There were beautiful pieces of jewelry, remnants of a lyre, barrels, swords, silver items, and drinking horns, etc. A Greek Vase room could not have showcased their entire collection of two million vases. They had a multitude of sarcophagi, mummies, and desiccated bodies, all in various stages of unwrap. Many were x-rayed showing bags of viscera between the legs and disjointed bones. Also mummies of cats, dogs, and ibises. There was a room of tomb paintings and papyri, a room of daily life in Egypt with toiletry items, musical instruments, toys, tools, dining ware, etc.
We rested a bit in the Coptic art exhibit. Next were the ancient Babylonian Royal Tombs of Ur with the oldest known lyre, the oldest known sledge, the oldest known anything we saw. A gilded sculpture of a goat on his hind legs behind a tree dated to 2600 BCE. The ancient Neo-Hittite landing to see goldware signet rings and votive plaques. A coin and medal gallery was quickly scanned. Early medieval art equals Christian art. The exhibit on watches and clocks was very interesting with ticking clocks surrounding us, including a clock face on the bottom of a gilded birdcage. Renaissance art, quickly through the early Britain rooms which were being remodeled and finally down to the coffee shop for lemon tea. Lemon tea is tea with lemon slices in it.
Now we were ready for the library to see illuminated manuscripts and “autographs” of various writers (examples of their handwriting), and “exemplifications” of the Magna Carta. One crumpled old copy had a crumpled seal of King John. There were first editions of books, oriental literature, etc. When guards came around saying “10 minutes to closing” we made our way towards the exit.

We had to pull out our umbrellas against the rain after a stop at a grocery for food supplies. We sat in front of St Martin’s of the Inn church at Trafalgar Square to write postcards before getting stamps at the nearby 24-hour post office. On the spur of the moment, we decided to check out the discount ticket booth at Leicester Square, and ended up with tickets to see “Educating Rita,” paying 7.90 GBP/$13.85 for two tickets that were 6.90 GBP/$12 each.

We headed to Piccadilly Circus to a Wimpy’s to share a chicken and chips, and each have a chocolate milkshake. At 19:15 we went to the nicely kept Piccadilly Theatre to find our stall seats down front at the end of the 11th row.

Piccadilly Theatre ticket

This theater was not at all full like the others had been. Instead of opera glasses, there were shallow finger bowls behind every other seat. Purpose? Like at the other theaters, at intermission the safety curtain was lowered and raised (fire drill?). The play was very amusing.

We took the tube from Trafalgar to South Kensington back to the hostel. When we arrived in our room, two German girls happily greeted us with the door wide open. The room was hot and smelly and the girls may have thought they would be alone with four American boys. Of those four American boys, one was Norwegian, one Spanish, one Italian, and the fourth could not have possibly been American because he was wearing black leather dress shoes! The German girls fell fast asleep so that I could not waken them to return their ID cards I found under my bedding. Sue’s bag had been pulled out from under her bunk, but nothing was missing.