Chapter Four: In Which We Take a Vacation From Our Vacation and Help Some Russians

Another day, another English breakfast...

It was raining today, but mostly drizzle. Not raining so hard that we needed to use our Oysters (pay-as-you-go passes for London Transport that allow you to visit as many pubs, historic sites, expensive grocery stores, and underwear emporia in as many neighbourhoods as you wish).

We decided to take a break from our vacation to do some shopping. We walked a few blocks to Habitat and Heal’s, both furniture and housewares stores. On the way, we saw this tiny cafe (pronounced “caff”) on the corner of Russell Square.


Habitat was really quite like Ikea, except double the price for many things. Luckily Sara realized that it would be impossible to bring back the kitchen that she liked. Heal’s was a strange mixture of high-end furniture, Wedgewood and Sophie Conran china, and 20th century kitsch and joke gifts. We were disappointed; we bought nothing. Sodden and still laden with money, we made our way to Covent Garden, via Monmouth Coffee Company, where Sara recharged.


At Covent Garden, we ate a lunch of Cornish pasties. Took a spin around the stalls but still couldn’t find anything to spend money on. Globalization is a terrible thing – most of the stores in the market were familiar to us from Toronto (they even had a Disney Store!). Luckily, the London Transport Museum was close at hand, so we were able to drop some serious poundage at the gift shop. Didn’t see the museum itself, though – too cheap to pay the admission charge. After the spending, we found a public toilet next to this lovely fountain.

More about English toilets in a later blog – don’t miss it.

What do you know – just up the street was another Paul Café, the place that makes the magnificent hot chocolate. Went in, got a table, bolted Sara down, and Kelly enjoyed another excellent cup of chocolate. Sara had a mocha and nearly passed out from the bliss.

Back up to Seven Dials to Neal Street to visit the Doc Martens store, where Sara talked Kelly into purchasing not one, but two pairs of Doc Martens. It took some doing, but it worked, because A. Kelly’s size (tiny) is not available in Canada, and B. the London price was better than the Canadian price, even with the exchange, and C. one of the pairs was red.

Back to the hotel to drop off the purchases, and then we felt we really must do some more vacationing, so we headed off to the British Museum. What a lot of tourists! We started off in Daily Life in Greece and Rome. This is Mithras:


The ancient gods did not have Milk Bones, so what better way to give his pup a treat than by killing a bull and letting Fido lick up the blood?


We liked this little trumpet-playing rat.


After Greece and Rome, we headed down to Egypt with some side-trips to Assyria. Here is a famous Egyptian cat.


Ramses II, 1270 BC (Thebes), had a very big head:


He also had a very big arm, if this is his arm. Frankly, we read so many museum signs yesterday that we were signed out; at the British Museum Kelly, at least, went on a frenzied picture-taking spree, ignoring all signs. It was very liberating.


Big lion. Reminded us a bit of Harry when he's on the examining table at the vet.


Detail of a really really big door (approx. 15 feet high) from some really really old place. This is actually a reconstruction of the door (notice how nice the wood looks). I think this was from Assyria.


This is Horus (we're back to Egypt):


Amenhotep III, 1370 BC (Thebes). One hundred years earlier than the statue of Ramses II, and a very different style:


A row of Sekhmet, lioness warrior goddess of Upper Egypt and protector of Pharoahs. We took a lot of pictures of lions and cats, being a bit homesick. There is a real dearth of cats in London. Even dogs are a bit thin on the ground, although they seem to show up a lot in portraits and statues.


The Rosetta Stone, an early example of a public announcement in several different languages (Egypt in 196 BC was obviously a multicultural society like ours). This tablet showed a decree by Ptolemy V in Egyptian hieroglyphics, Demotic, and Greek. After it was discovered by the French in 1799, it was very helpful in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics - basically, it was the key to the code.

Over to Greece, to the Nereid monument of ancient Lykia, so-named because of the Nereids (daughters of sea god Nereus) between the columns. Lykia was in what is now southwest Turkey.


Took a quick look at the Parthenon Sculptures (aka the Elgin Marbles - the first time Sara came to the British Musuem, she thought, "Sure, these Parthenon Sculptures are all very nice, but where are those Elgin Marbles?"), and then headed out past this beautiful statue of Aphrodite bathing:


We meant to head back to the hotel, drop off our gift shop purchases, and go to the local Waitrose to pick up some supper, but just outside the museum we were approached by a lost Russian who spoke no English but needed to find her hotel on Bedford Way. Luckily we carry a map wherever we go, so we were able to ascertain that Bedford Way was actually a sort of continuation of our own Bedford Place on the other side of Russell Square. We bade the Russian lady and her posse follow us and, good Samaritans that we are, by-passed our hotel and umbrellas and led them straight through the park to their street, where we bid them adieu and they said “spaciba,” which as far as I can remember means “thank you” in Russian. Good deed done, we headed off to Waitrose, whereupon it commenced to rain determinedly.

Back at the ranch, we ate a simple supper of salad, French dry sausage with herbes de Provence, Cornish brie, bread, white bean spread and white wine. In the dining room, we met a woman named Uranus (absolutely true) -- and that’s all the news for Friday!