Up early today because we had tickets to go to the British Museum. Not only generally to see the British Museum, but also to go to a special exhibit about the latter years of Michelangelo. We were getting better at getting on the subway and managed to find our way and get off and walk over to the British Museum.
When we got there, we had a big surprise. The line to get in was a couple blocks long. However, we have been given the tip to go to the front of the line with our tickets the exhibit. The general admission to the museum is free. . We paid for exhibit and save the time for us to get into the museum. We were feeling very pleased with ourselves. We were able to go up the stairs and see the amazing exhibit about the last few years of Michelangelo‘s life. There weren’t any of his biggest sculptures and paintings. But there were lots of sketches of his work and then sometimes the full execution from the sketch done by one of his followers. Even in his latter days, he did a lot of really creative work and continued to be called upon two design and paint many exquisite things. We really enjoyed this exhibit following Michelangelo/
Then, we went on guided tour to one of the rooms that had Japanese art. We saw both some modern and ancient art and heard some really interesting things shared by the knowledgeable. It was nice to be a quieter place to enjoy these beautiful Japanese pieces
Following that we went on another docent-lead tour of African art. They were both traditional and modern pieces. We saw some amazing masks and masquerade costumes. We also were really touched by a large piece called The Tree of Life, which was done in Mozambique which had been in a war for 15 years. Through a commission form the British Museum, the call went out for people to bring their hidden caches of guns and weapons and trade them in for things like shovels, sewing machines and plows. The remnants of the weapons were cut down so they couldn’t be used again and made into a really amazing piece affirming life.
Then we did a quick tour of some of the "greatest hits" of the museum: the Rosetta Stone, which was such an important piece of being able to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics was there. Also, some of the statues taken from Greece from the Parthenon. We had seen the original place that these should be when we were in Athens a couple years ago. it was striking to see the things that had been taken and put on display in the British Museum. In a lot of ways, this really is a archeological museum that was created out of the colonial Empire and we got some small pieces of dialogue about some of the items being returned where they came from. We saw one of the large heads from Easter Island that has been requested to be returned. I hasn’t been returned yet.
You could clearly spend hours and weeks going through all the different rooms, looking and learning about the different pieces. There were many many school and travel groups that were obviously having this as part of their tour of London. But it was a little overwhelming after a while and at some point, we had to say that was enough, and we were ready to stop.
We walked over to Saint Paul Cathedral and sat outside for a while, enjoying the nice weather. On the plaza, there was a set up of a large screen so people could watch horse racing. There was quite a bit of steeplechase racing going on. It was an interesting area for people watching, and there was also some large animal statues that kids were climbing on.
We then went into Saint Paul for the evensong service. Today it featured a visiting choir from Georgia. It was beautiful in Saint Pauls. Later, we found that part of the cathedral had been bombed during World War II, as well as many of the buildings around it had really been decimated. It had been repaired and it was quite beautiful inside. We enjoyed the service, but were a little disappointed that the acoustics wasn’t so good there so it was difficult to hear all the words. But evensong is a lovely way to get a taste of these beautiful cathedrals. Following that we grabbed a little dinner and then went to see a play.
London has an area that is very similar to Broadway with lots of really good to theater. We spent quite a bit of time searching for just the right show. Lots of the theater are things we could see in the states or even in San Diego. We chose a smaller show The Choir of Man. This was a show that was set up like it was happening in a pub, with an actual bar on the stage that when you arrived, you could go up on stage and get yourself a pint and hang out for a while.
Sometimes there were also audience members who were brought up on stage during the show. But mostly it was an hour and a half of these nine men who ere all great singers and number of good musicians, singing, and sharing about their lives:relationships, the good, the bad, the struggles. It was really well done and we really recommend if you get a chance to see that show you should do it.
At the end of the night, it was a quick walk over to hop on the tube and then back to our flat south of London. What a full day.
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