First Day

Soon after arrival, we decided to hit up the British Museum, because it was within walking distance of our hostel. I'm not much of a museum guy, but I really enjoyed it because it was centered on ancient history (Egypt, Greece, Rome, Mesopotamia). It had great exhibits on mummification and burial rituals in Egypt and an unbelievable amount of sculptures from Greece and Rome. It was cool because it showed you the time period pieces were created and what was going on elsewhere in the world during that time. Part of the exhibit was on stones and sculptures taken from the Parthenon in the 1800's, a moral issue that is still debated today as over 1/2 of the Parthenon's artifacts are in the British Museum rather than in Athens or at least in Greece. It was amazing to see how massive some of the stones were and how they were somehow extracted from walls in multi-ton pieces. On our way home, we stopped at Sicilian Square, a nice little restaurant alley with architecture that looked hundreds of years old (see picture), for a sandwich. We then headed back to our hostel for a nap for an hour (to recover from jet-lag and lack of sleep on the plane). Hunter met a couple of our roommates, friends from California, while I was down in the common room on the computer. We're now headed out for dinner and plan to hit Porters English Restaurant and the Nag's Head Pub in Covent Garden, all of which was recommended in my guidebook. The weather is a bit cooler than at home, but very pleasant and better than we were expecting for London.