I remember going to the National Gallery every day for the first few weeks we were here, like I was trying to become one with the paintings or something hah. The whole time everyone kept telling me I needed to get over to see the British Museum.
But it's "the British Museum." Sometimes I don't even know why I'm IN England. The English weren't particularly nice to my ancestors, and quite frankly they weren't very nice to anyone's ancestors. I really have no interest in learning about the history of a people who managed to rape and pillage and decimate entire populations of people on almost every single continent (and who continue to do so even to this day...). Moving on though.
Eventually I made my way to the British Museum. Let me just say, it is NOT a museum about everything British. It's basically a HUGE building filled with random collections of artifacts, sarcophigi, pieces of architecture, totem poles, tribal dress, etc. etc. from all over the world. When you first walk up to the building, you are immediately awe-struck by its sheer massiveness. It looks like an ancient Greek temple, it doesn't look at all like it belongs plopped in the middle of London.
This is the top of the entrance, I need to try to get it at a better angle, I took this picture the first time I went and I was all fumbly with excitement.
Then you get inside and you're confronted with these massive triagular windows on the ceiling. It's simply incredible, the amount of light flowing everywhere. It is HUGE, both inside and out. It's not a museum you can see in one day, so good thing it's free! This is the main area, which apparently used to be a green but is now a lot of things (anything but green though).
These are some bearded men. They look kind of like the statues with the glowy eyes from The Never Ending Story Shows you how much I paid attention whilst walking through the museum. It's a knowledge overload.
I do remember that these were taken from the Parthenon. The Greek parts of the museum are ASTONISHING (not that the rest of the museum isn't...)
And this is the Rosetta stone! Cool huh??
We went to the British Museum today for my Renaissance Art class to see the Prints and Drawings room where they have the sketches of such famous Renaissance men as Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, etc. It was AMAZING to see their sketches up close, not behind glass or anything. They're very protective of the sketches, don't get me wrong, but the room is intimate, only something like 10-15 people are let in at a time, and it's a HUGE library-like room, with lots of workers bustling around cataloguing things, but it's so quite and it's like it's just you and the Renaissance. It's really very beautiful.
I do love it here, a lot. I was walking home from the museum today, alone, and I thought to myself "Self, I don't think I've ever felt quite so alone in my whole life," but it's not a bad kind of alone. It's like being totally and utterly alone on a distant planet, away from all other people and life, but it's okay because you have you and your thoughts and your imagination. I probably feel like that because the people in London are so unfriendly, they can't even be bothered to say "hello" or even to make eye contact. But it's nice, this alone-ness. I think I might just miss it when I go home.
This is my "I'm so happy to be in London" face :)
If I don't post tomorrow or Friday, have a lovely weekend world! I'm off to Norway to become one with my inner Viking. I think I'll start going by Rachel the Red hahaha
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