Museum Mecca: The British Museum

Three words: the British Museum.

To a person who is into museums, this is a it. Some of the best collections of historical artifacts in the world are housed in the British Museum. Although there are heated debates about the rightful ownership of many of the museum's objects - most notably the Elgin Marbles - the museum itself is amazing.

I have to admit, I love museum cafes in the British Isles. I don't know what it is, but they are just so much better than most American ones. And you can always get a scone with clotted cream :) Which is precisely what I was in the mood for after touring the Tower of London all morning. So before we began running around the museum, Jenna and I hit up one of the many cafes at the museum. And I'm happy to say that it did not disappoint. 

After our little pick me up, Jenna and I started out with the museum's most well know residents: the Elign Marbles. This temple let us know we were heading in the right direction. 

Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of the hall itself, but the Elgin Marbles are housed in a separate room, designed to look like a Greek Temple. After years of reading about them and studying their history, I have to admit that I was pretty much speechless upon entering the exhibit. Here are some of my favorite sculptures and reliefs. Sorry about the quality, but I promise I will take my SLR to exhibits from now on, so blogs after I cover my UK trip will have better quality pictures. 

I've always loved the way the Greeks carved fabric. The draping looks so real in all of it!

Then Jenna and I went to explore the rest of the museum. We had a fellow museum patron take this picture of the two of us, and her response after looking at the picture was, "You are very white." Yes, yes we are. That's what winters spent inside, working in the lab will do.

Everywhere you look, there is just something amazing to behold. But we had to keep moving to get to the next big item on our list...

...the Rosetta Stone! It was so crowded around the stone that we were pushed and shoved while attempting to take pictures of the stone that unlocked the secrets of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. But we waited and eventually made it to the front. And I have to admit, it was worth the wait. 

Then we continued with the Egyptian theme and toured the mummy halls. I have to say that I was impressed with all the different mummies in the collection. Jenna was excited to see so many animal mummies.

We then made our way around the museum hitting the rest of the "Top 10 Objects" listed in our map.  If you are going to the British Museum for the first time, definitely buy the map at the information desk. It will make your visit there so much easier. And you will make sure that you get to see their most well known objects. We were happy to have the list because we didn't want to get back to the States and realize that we had missed one of the main objects. It also gave us a attack plan, which is definitely needed since the museum is so large. 

As we were winding our way through the Ancient Europe exhibit, Jenna had the brilliant idea to "try on" some of the gold. I think the gold collar suits her beautifully! Throughout this exhibit, I was searching for two golden beads (about the size of a fist), which last I heard the museum had in its collection. These are the two missing beads from a large necklace at the National Museum of Ireland. But alas, I could not locate them. 

The final display that I wanted to see was the artifacts recovered from the Sutton Hoo site,  a ship burial. At one point I thought that I would go into medieval archaeology, so seeing these artifacts that were in so many of my old textbooks was amazing.

The British Museum was amazing. I can't wait to go back next time I'm in London and see what I missed. But for a first visit, I can't complain.