One part travel blog. One part nerdy history lesson.

Day 23- London Wrap Up

Well, this is it. The last day of our fantasy vacation. 🙂 we didn’t do a lot. We stuck “Baboo” (my mother) with Norah on her birthday…but Norah sang her the cutest Happy Birthday song… and we went to the British Museum.

I was expecting a lot of British things at the Birtish museum….however, it was more of a collection of items from around the world… Which was unexpected. Egyptian mummies, African tribal pieces,  Chinese vases….

They did have some pretty cool items:

 

Inside the building in the Great Hall…I didn’t expect such a modern bright atrium area in that old Greek style building  

  

The Rosetta Stone. It was discovered by a French soldier in Egypt in 1799 when Napoleon invaded Egypt…but the British soon  said, “no, conquering is what WE do…” And forced the French out after the French had defeated the Ottomans…so with victory comes the spoils…and the stone has been on display here in the British Museum since 1802. The stone has basically the same text in three languages- the top is ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, the middle is Demotic (a newer Egyptian, post-hieroglyphic times) and Ancient Greek at the bottom. This was the first piece that helped us translate ancient Egyptian.      

Cupid.  I can’t imagine the stories of how these pieces came to live in Britain. The war and the conquest and pilfering that would have brought these ancient pieces from their original lands here… 🙂      

Roman mosaics that have been uncovered underneath London      

This ship is actually a clock from the 1500s with moving pieces so that the men on the deck would have rowed, the cannons might have moved…It was so intricate, I would have loved to see it in action. 

  

I would kill to get my hands on some of the old books in the library room. Like these old 1700s atlas volumes- hand drawn maps of the world… 

  

After the British Museum, we went for one last British experience- High Afternoon Tea.   

We had a seat by the window overlooking Hyde Park in this fancy little Park and Tea room.  

Kegan was less than impressed but he was a good sport because I was really excited to be all fancy and high class. Lol  (and I walked around London in heels all day so we would be classy enough for tea time…he knew better than to complain even though he was baking in his Sweater haha) – he says it was actually more of a “braise” since it was trapping in all the moisture. Gross. And definitely not classy. Lol        

Mango and pineapple palate cleanser  

We got to select our tea. I picked Ceylon and Kegan picked Assam (although we wouldn’t have known the difference probably haha)

  

We had trays full of pastries, sandwiches and scones    

Fresh gooseberry and rhubarb jams with butter for our scones  

They insisted we take our cake to go when we couldn’t eat any more haha

Our evening was boring as we spent it packing up for our morning flight. 

Our first flight was uneventful other than it was almost empty. We had the whole plane across the pond to ourselves basically and when Norah went to sleep, we just laid her down in her own row! Haha

 

 

Our second flight from Newark to West Palm was delayed an hour- which was awesome because otherwise we would have missed it. We had to go through a line for customs when we got to Newark… Then we had to get our luggage, because international luggage doesn’t transfer. Then we had to get in another line to drop off our customs declaration forms, then another line to recheck our luggage. Then we had to cross to another terminal by air train to get our second flight- and when we got to the new terminal, they were too busy so they closed that particular security screening and redirected us across to the other side of the terminal where we had another 30 minute wait to be allowed to go through security. 

So…yeah….that was awesome. lol.

But, Norah did a 15 hour day of flights like a champ. No major outbursts or meltdowns- just typical “I don’t want to sit down” 2 year old stuff. She was the official airplane greeter. On her 6 trips to the potty she had to stop and say hi every time to every row on the way to and from. Lol luckily she’s cute and I don’t think anyone about killed her :).

So…this basically concludes the blog trip updates. I am so glad so many people followed our trip and enjoyed the updates! I had fun recording it all and getting to share a little nerd history 🙂 

If you are going on a vacation and want to record your own trip and share it, let me know-you can use this blog, too!  I can create an account for you and show you how easy it is to post updates from your phone! 

I’m already scheming on where and when our next trip will be… I think we are settling on Germany/Switzerland/Austria late late summer or early fall. 

I’ll be sure to post again when we have specifics and give you the option to “opt out” of email updates for whatever comes next. 

Thanks again for following! 

Erin

1 Comment

  1. Aunt Deana

    I have so enjoyed your blog and looked forward every day to your travel updates! As for it being ‘so easy’ to post from phone, not so for techno tards like me. I must have computer and even then it’s not so easy. But I am thankful YOU understand how to do because I am already looking forward to your next trip!

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