British Museum and Singing in the Rain

This morning, Mom and I headed over to the British Museum.  We bought breakfast at a little bakery just down the block from the hotel, and we ate it in a leisurely fashion on the subway.  I had a Spanish omelette. 

The museum was just as cool as I remember it, though after a couple hours, even though there was still much to see, I was kind of done with it.  They have so much of everything that it gets wearying.  By the afternoon, I was thinking that there's not much difference between gold bracelets made in 300BC and gold bracelets made in 500BC, and there were still gold bracelets to be seen from basically every century ever.  Of course it's cool that they have all that stuff, and of course there is way more to the museum than gold bracelets, but there was just so much of the same thing that I didn't feel guilty about not spending all day soaking it up.

My favorite thing, however, is a mesh tapestry in one of the first chambers.  It has thousands and thousands of little pockets sewn into it, and in each pocket is a pill.  The tapestry is supposed to represent the amount of medication a person is prescribed in his/her lifetime.  It's amazing to see such a massive representation of the medicine we take.  It's also very interesting for me to see the progression of a life in terms of the illnesses they needed to treat.  Headaches, Flu, prenatal vitamins, chemo, etc...  The first time I saw this tapestry, I accidentally viewed it backwards, and it was sad yet poetic to watch the clock be turned back for an ailing woman taking pills by the fistful every day, all the way until she was an infant and receiving vaccinations and vitamins.

But after the museum, we had gourmet Mexican food for lunch, which was pretty much the same as above average Mexican food everywhere.  I love me some guacamole. 

The real treat of the day, however, was the musical "Singing in the Rain."  It was fantastically done, with real water pouring from the ceiling, tons of dancing with umbrellas, beautiful costumes, and killer special effects.  The theatre itself was also a work of art.  It seemed to still be stuck in the 1920's, and Mom and I admired the ornate carvings and velvet curtains and foggy windows whilst drinking champagne before the show started.

The tube was quite crowded on the way home, but once the journey was over, our good old faithful bakery was still open and we got a little dinner.  I was rather surprised to find a place still open at 11pm.  In France, there's not a damn thing open past 7:30 usually.  It was a lovely day, and tomorrow we catch a train to Paris.  Cheers!