It's beginning to look a lot like its time to go home

With only two weeks left in London, its time to start doing all of the activities that have been overlooked so far. All of the museums have to be seen, the sights have to be visited and the foods have to be tried.

Thursday, November 29

Museums are a good start, since they are free. After I finished class on Thursday the British Museum beckoned. Now, the British Museum is unique in that it doesn’t contain any British artifacts, or even many European artifacts. Instead, it is a collection of treasures the United Kingdom picked up during its imperial days. You can see everything from Roman temples to Persian pottery to Egyptian mummies.

The highlight is the Rosetta Stone, though. The famous piece of carved slab that allowed researchers to decode ancient Egyptian sits in the middle of the Egypt exhibit, surrounded by glass and fawning tourists. It’s surprisingly big.

Friday, November 30

Another day, another free entry, this time to the National Gallery. I don’t pretend to know a lot about art, but Deb fancies impressionism, so we spent a good two or three hours strolling through the winding halls of the National gallery. There were some works by Picasso and other famous painters, and some of the art stretched back to the 1250s.

We started with the recent impressionists, though, and essentially went back in time. The farther back we went, the more repetitive the subjects of the paintings got. By the time we hit 1250, the only art they had was from churches. I know artists didn’t paint much else in those days, but if I saw more shepherds offering gifts to baby Jesus I was going to scream.

The National Gallery is in Trafalgar Square, and we hopped across the street to St. Martin in the Fields’ “Café in the Crypt” where we had afternoon tea. We hadn’t had a proper afternoon tea, and this one was a bargain by London Standards. Some hotels charge up to £16 for high tea, but ours cost a paltry £5 each. Each tea plate wasn’t skimpy by any standards, including two cups of tea, a piece of multilayer chocolate cake, a piece of cherry sponge cake, a scone, jam and clotted cream (thick whipped cream). It was delicious, not to mention very filling.

On the way home we ducked into Hamleys to take in the five story toy store during the Christmas season. It was everything you could expect, with parents running around looking for lost children and clerks demonstrating toys wherever you looked. I think I could live in Hamleys.

Saturday, December 1

I’ve lived on Edgware road, which is heavily populated by Lebanese, for three months now, and until Saturday I had not tried any Lebanese food. Obviously, there was a lot of choice in restaurants when I finally decided it was time.

Three of us went to Maroush, a sit-down resteraunt about two doors down from the entrance to our flat. They were pretty cheap, for a sit down restaurant, and had an expansive menu with clear English subtitles.

The food was splendid; I had falafel along with rice with lamb. Now, I’ve eaten falafel in the dining hall at Syracuse, and it was not a pleasant experience. Apparently fresh ingredients and a chef who knows what he’s doing make a world of difference.

After a very filling meal, it was time to waddle down to Oxford Street. To promote Christmas shopping, the city had kindly closed Regent and Oxford streets to traffic. I just wanted to go in order to walk on the streets that are typically populated by large buses and aggressive taxis, but it was also useful in that Deb and I stopped in some of the stores that we pass every day walking to and from school but have still never visited.

I won’t detail every stop, but Selfridge’s was definitely the most interesting. Never mind the “wonder room,” containing watches and wine worth thousands of pounds. No, the best part of the store was the foodhall. We found out, three months too late, that they stock a good deal of American food, if you’re willing to pay for it. JIFF peanut butter? £2.50. Oreos? £4.00. Aunt Jemima pancake syrup? £6.50.

The fact that it was probably the most expensive bottle of Aunt Jemima I’ll every see, it was fun to see those American brands again. Maybe I’ll go back before flying home in order to brush up on US food.

Street entertainers littered the road, providing us with lots of fun while walking. Dancing Santas, a balloon comic, Dora the Explorer and Paddington Bear were all there. They had plenty of an audience, because I’ve never seen a street with that many people walking down it. It was elbow to elbow the entire way across.

We also stopped in at the flagship Apple store on Regent street because it started raining on our parade. I checked my e-mail on an iPhone and examined the new iPod Nano and iPod Touch. I hadn’t realized that the iPod Touch has WiFi, but now I can see that it would be quite handy.

On the way home, it was “snowing” outside of Debenham’s. The snow was actually little bubbles, but it was, nonetheless, a nice Christmasy touch.