British Museum, Knightsbridge

After class on Friday, I shipped a few gifts home. It has taken me a while to get this done, and so I am happy to have finally sent them on their way. I then went to the British Museum to see the Rosetta Stone. It was marvelous. I loved it. It was so powerful. It literally unlocked a few thousand years of previously “lost” history. It was really cool too, because the plaque explained how to read a bit. At first, the Stone was a blur of Hieroglyphs, Demotic and Greek. Then, the plaque urged me to find the circled hieroglyphs. Circled groups of images indicate a name. In this case, the name Ptolemy came up multiple times. The plaque broke down each character as a letter. It was also interesting to learn that hieroglyphs used a combination of characters and images. For instance, after spelling out the word “cat” there was an image of a cat. This was on a different artifact in the museum. It was interesting to find all the circled hieroglyphs on other artifacts throughout the museum, as well. Anyway, I am so happy to have seen the Rosetta Stone. I cannot really articulate how it made me feel, but it was truly captivating, and it made me want to sit all day trying to solve the puzzle of translating the languages. It was also interesting to see that along the sides of the stone, the date it was captured and the name of King George I are written. In addition, the piece that we have of the Stone is only a portion of the original stone.

I also walked through the scattered remains of the Parthenon, and some of the Persian and Assyrian artifacts. The Parthenon was essentially reconstructed in the room so that one can walk around and see what the edges of the ceiling looked like. I read almost every plaque in that section of the museum. I plan to go back another day to do another section. Perhaps it will be a gradual learning process, because there is way too much to see in one visit.

My hands were very dry, so after getting on the tube at Holborn, I got off at Knightsbridge. Earlier in the day, I looked up locations for The Body Shop, and saw that there was one near Harrod’s. I shopped around a few stores, and went into The Body Shop to buy the smaller Hemp hand lotion. The night before, I had stopped at a Body Shop counter at Waterloo but they had sold out of the small lotions, and the guy was not very helpful. I tried on a dress at H&M that was designed by Madonna, but it didn’t fit quite right. It was different though, and slimming. I really liked that it had a lot of cinched fabric at the empire waist.

After shopping, I walked home through Russell Square I think it’s called. It was a new perspective coming up from the north side of South Kensington. Anyway, there were a number of nice restaurants along the way. When I got home, I ate some dinner and collapsed for the rest of the night, knowing that I had to wake up the next morning for Oxford and Blenheim Palace.