Londontown

After a bit of a hectic half-term week, I decided to get away for the weekend to de-stress. I got on a train yesterday morning and arrived in London just after lunch time. I checked in to "Baden-Powell House", a Scout-run hostel in South Kensington. It was a bit pricey for my liking, but it was clean, quiet and secure… and it was in South Ken, right around the corner from Stef's!

After I got settled in to my hostel, I took the tube into the centre to the British Museum. This place is MASSIVE! If I wanted to see everything in there, I would have to go every day for 3 weeks! I decided to get one of those audio tour things… which turned out to be a waste of money, because it only takes you on tours of the collections from Egypt, Greece & Rome and Korea. I got to see the Rosetta Stone, so that was pretty sweet. I really liked looking at the ancient Assyrian collection. It was full of amazing stone wall panels and giant statues from palaces. I felt like a huge nerd when I immediately recognized the writing on the panels as 'cuneiform', something I learned at design school. The amount of detail in the wall panels was ridiculous! You can see what I mean in the carving of the horse head below. Also, there was a huge room devoted to panels describing the Assyrian king's hobby of lion-killing. In Ancient Assyria, only the king was allowed to kill lions. So, they caught a whole bunch of lions, put them in cages and then released them into an arena where the king went crazy with a bow and arrow!! I was shocked that people would want to look at dying lions on their walls, but apparently the lions were abundant and known as dangerous pests at the time, so I guess people liked seeing them suffer. That species of lion is now extinct.

Later on, I met up with Stef at "The Maple Leaf", hoping to see some Canadian coverage of the Winter Olympics and drink some Molson Canadian. Unfortunately, I was denied my dreams, as the bar does not serve Molson Canadian and the coverage they showed was from the BBC. We couldn't get our own table, so we shared with some other Canadians! We met Andrew from Montreal, Annie and Esther from BC and Mark… I'm not too sure where he was from. It was nice to chat to some of my countrymen and to get all excited about the games. But soon, I was engrossed in conversation with my old friend and we forgot about the Olympics, as the screen was blocked by a whole slew of Polish people, cheering for their aerial ski jumper. Soon, Spyro arrived and our fellow Canadians left us to have the table to ourself. There is nothing better to do on a Saturday night than to sit down in a pub and chat to friends. Thanks Stef and Spyro for a great night!

The next day, Stef and I wandered around the Science Museum (most museums in London are free, btw). We saw some really gross medical instruments from Medieval times and some dioramas about medicine through the ages. Later, we met up for lunch with Spyro and Tina! Our server at the pub was Canadian! Yay! Again, it was so relaxing to just sit and catch up.

Well, I'm back to work, bright and early tomorrow morning… woot