It was raining when we woke on Monday; we could see people on the streets below us with umbrellas so we decided to take in something indoors for the day. Of course, everyone else had the same idea.
We walked down the British Museum and spent the morning wandering through its exhibits. Like the Met in New York, one could spend weeks in the British Museum so we "skimmed" as much as we could. We covered most of the Egyptian, Middle Eastern and European exhibits, choosing to skip North America. We also missed Asia. What we did see was, of course, fascinating. If I ever can get my pictures attached, I'll share some pictures.
We grabbed a cab from there to... Let me pause here to interject some commentary about the fine drivers of the Black Cabs. These drivers train for about four years before becoming a cabbie, having traveled some 400 different routes through the city. They are expected to know not only the streets, but what it on them. Every one of them we have had contact with have spoken understandable English (even the cockney was understandable), were friendly, drove sanely and knew where it was we wanted to go when we told them. How refreshing after the terrifying and sometimes frustrating cab experiences here in the States.
Ok, we grabbed a cab from the British Museum to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. Sue and Dana seem game for almost anything and this swing from "high culture", if you will, to pop culture didn't disturb them at all. In fact, Dana pepped up a little. If you have never been to the wax museum, it is a bit of fun - especially with kids and teens (although I saw a lot of roving bands of 20-somethings). There are various rooms arranged around themes: Hollywood, sports, scary, historical...etc. I had been here ten years before so had seen the "older" figures, but had not seen the latest - and I had to read more name plaques this time around/ We took lots of pictures of Dana with various "sexy British men" (i.e. Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Patrick Stewart, the guy who played Harry Potter) but also with Morgan Freeman, Bob Marley, Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe. The wax figures can be posed with and it was fun to watch other visitors improvise with the dummies. Dana seemed a little reticent at first - probably because she is not used to making such a public display - but after continued encouragement (er..nagging), she relaxed and got into the swing of it. By the time we got to the GW Bush figure, she posed with an exasperated, oh-no-not-again look that even visitors standing nearby thought was funny.
We got through the exhibits in a few hours and then went in search of food. We have been on the "London diet" - two meals and a snack - so this was our second meal. We ate some good sandwiches at the pub at the Sherlock Hotel nearby. We found an ATM to top off our cash reserves and headed back to the hotel to freshen up before...
Monday night was our first theatre night and we were seeing "Les Mis" at the Queen's Theatre (I think it was). We had great seats. It was a fabulous production with many now familiar songs. I'm pretty sure Dana enjoyed her first experience seeing a big city musical production. I did chat up the gentleman next to me, who was from Sydney (Amanda, he seemed not to know you...wonder why). All good time was had by all.
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