| From: brong@zebkrahn.brong.net (Bron Gondwana) Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 19:20:18 +1000 |
The big museum day. We went to Sainsburys, it finally being open, and purchased lots of breakfast and lunch foods. There was a really nice bread for 45p, which went fantastically with dip. We caught the train to the British Museum, arriving a little before midday, and proceded to walk around. Kate had already seen part of it, and we look at different speeds anyway, so we split up, arranging to meet back in the courtyard every hour. They have recently (last couple of years) covered the central courtyard, and made it available to the public for the first time in about 150 years (from memory). It was very nice and shiny. I started in old Egypt, and proceeded through all sorts of places. They have lots of giant sculptures! It was quite clear that most of history, even if not actually written, still goes to the successful types who managed to kill off the competition. They're the ones who can afford the number of slaves that would have been required to produce some of this stuff, so despite being impressed with all that intricate work, I was a little saddened at how many lives must have been spent to produce it all - but enough philosophy. There is an amazing collection of coins, giving a history of money through the ages - right through to the birth of the Euro. The other thing that really impressed me was the collection of clocks - so many intricate mechanisms for translating a spring or pendulum's energy into accurate movement of the hands. Even more impressive were clocks with movement of the planets, seasons, dates, even phases of the moon - all with separate hands. I imagine leap years may have required manual intervention - at least the 100 and 400 year cycles, the exact mechanisms weren't shown. We finished at 5:30, when the museum closed. With completely fried brains, we went to the pub over the road, where we were served by a girl from Melbourne. Big surprise there, I believe a lot of bar staff in the UK are from Australia. I cooked dinner for the household when we got home, and then we slept (at least Kate did, I wrote some diary entries first) |
| Calendar | Diary | Places | Photos | Home | [last update Tue Apr 22 01:15:00 2003] |