Amy and Dave's Excellent Adventures: Busy Days

Reunited!

Flowers decorate many of the buildings in London. Here a just a few pictures of flowers that cheerfully brighten the city.

These flowers decorate our hotel.

Here is the nearby pub where I dined Saturday evening.

We have had several very action packed days in England. In the morning I went back to the V&A to see more stuff. One of the pieces I saw was Emergence XV from Dominic Labino. Meanwhile, Amy was in transit. I met her at the Notting Hill Gate subway stop and we walked back to the hotel together.

Emergence XV, Labino, 1973.

We were one of many visiting the British Museum.

The British Museum was on the afternoon agenda. There were amazing items to see: the Rosetta stone, Elgin marbles, Lewis Chessmen, and an Easter Island statue to name just a few. My friend Dave must have been one too many who had to touch the Rosetta stone as it now sits behind glass. We also saw some fantastic 7th century items recently discovered in Sutton Hoo. Several of these items contain some very cool Celtic interlace.

A buckle found at Sutton Hoo.

Two Lewis Chessmen.

The Easter Island statue.

The Rosetta Stone.

The Elgin Marbles. These marble pieces originally decorated the Parthenon.

We also saw three Scottish carved stone balls. These are quite puzzling objects dating back to about 2500 BC. Just over 400 have been discovered, mostly in Scotland and northern England. Some have been discovered in burial sites and others turn up as a part of agricultural fieldwork. They are typically about 2.5-4 inches in diameter, roughly the size of a small orange; the will easily have fit into your hand. The balls typically have knobs on the surface, most have 6 knobs. There are guesses as to their use from ceremonial mace-head, throwing object, system of weights, fishing net weight, and bola weights. Another interesting suggestion is that these objects illustrate knowledge of the Platonic solids (tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron) long before the Greeks. Hmm...

After we left the museum, we had a nice dinner at a local pub. You saw the nice picture on Sunday's post.
Monday we visited the Tate Modern museum, where we had a roll and coffee for lunch. The coffee shop on the top floor has a great view of the Thames and the London skyline. We saw some interesting pieces.

Amy intently studies one of her favorites from the Tate Modern: Grey by Gerhard Richter.

View from the Tate Modern.

We headed back across the Millennium bridge, which heads directly to St. Paul's cathedral, both seen below. This is a nice pedestrian bridge across the Thames, which opened in 2000. When originally opened, it wobbled and swayed "uncomfortably" and was closed for two years for study and repair. Thankfully, we felt no wobble as we crossed.

Millennium bridge.

St. Paul's

From there we went to the British Library. They have a nice collection of items on display. We saw a old English documents including the a copy of the Magna Carta from 1215 and a copy of Beowulf. We saw several old Bibles including a Tyndale; he was burned at the stake for printing a copy of the Bible in English. There were many illuminated documents containing anywhere from simple pictures to whimsical characters to intricate Celtic interlace. There were also documents from the Beatles on display. Several were drafts of songs such as Michelle, Hard Days Night, and In My Life.

We then returned again to the V&A to see more items.

A cool fractal table from the V&A.

After the V&A closed we decided to visit Harrod's, a very opulent department store catering to the upper tier of society.

Today our agenda was to visit the Ashmolean museum in Oxford. There is a coach line that runs 4 buses every hour between London and Oxford with just a few stops along the way. It is still a two hour ride. On the agenda was to see some more Scottish carved stone balls. The Ashmolean's collection contains five. They indicated another museum, the Pitt River, might also contain some. We decided that we had time to make the short walk through campus to check. Sure enough, they have three, but none on display. Despite not being able to see them, I obtained some contact information that will allow my research to move forward.

A carved stone ball from the Ashmolean.

We also visited the history of science museum which contained lots of old scientific equipment. There were some small Napier's bones, a multiplication aid from 300 years ago. After a pub lunch, we hopped back on the Oxford Tube (the bus), back to London. I took a short nap as did Amy. The bus took us to Victoria station and it was late in the afternoon when we arrived. We decided to go see some London sights.