7/21/09 -- British Museum, Sir John Sloane's, St. Paul's Cathedral

Today started off with yet another museum. I'm starting to get tired of them. Ha ha I still enjoy it, but it gets a little old sometimes. Anyway we started off at the British Museum. This museum was really interesting. It houses a lot of different things, but some of the most important are the pieces from the pediment of the Parthenon, and the Rosetta stone. My favorite part was the pieces of the pediment. During World War II the Parthenon was almost blown completely apart. Pieces from the pediment and the upper part of the Parthenon we're thrown all over the ground. Archaeologists found the pieces and sent them to the British Museum to be put on display. A lot of the pieces are still kept in pretty good condition, even though they are missing a few limbs. I was still surprised at how put together they were. It was really cool to see.
After the British Musuem we went to this old house of one of the greatest architects in London. The architects name was Sir John Soane. Throughout his lifetime he not only had designed many buildings, but he also had collected many artifacts from all over the world. His house today is a museum of his designs and of all of these things that he had collected. There was som very interesting stuff in there. I thought the coolest artifact was this large bathtub that he had purchased from someone in Egypt. It was really tall and wide and had Egypitan heiroglyphs around the entire exterior of the tub. Another fact that I found really interesting was the gravesite that John Sloane had built for his dog Fanny. After his wife died he was really lonely and his dog was the only family that he had. When his dog died he built her a beautiful gravesite, it's kind of in the middle of his houses outsie in the courtyard. It's a large stone that extends up the side of the house the stone read 'Alas, poor Fanny'. The coolest part about this grave was that the top of the stone was curved similar to the telephone boxes that are all around London. Darrin told us that his design had been the inspiration for the telephone boxes, so I thought that was pretty cool.
We ate lunch as a group at the park and then headed to St. Paul's Cathedral. We are all getting so tired of walking and need a total recoup day, so by the time we got to St. Paul's we were all sleeping on the staircase waiting to be let in. I think Darrin captured some pretty funny pictures of us all. We finally went into the cathedral. It is a very beautiful church. It's where Winston Churchill's funeral was and where Princess Diana and Prince Charles were married. My favorite part of the church is in the back section is a memorial for the American troops that fought in World War II. There is a beautiful golden arc, and a circular mosaic floor around it that thanks the American soldiers for fighting and it's from the British people. I really found that very special.
After looking around we headed up the Dome. We've climbed so many domes at this point that we were used to the crowded and claustrophobic spaces on the way up. All of the other people around us were practically freaking out because it was so squishy for them, but we just laughed because we've climbed at least four domes at this point. It was a total of 530 stairs this time. My legs were burning, but as always it was completely worth it. The view was very beautiful, and we got some sweet pictures of London.
We climbed back down and then had the rest of the night free. Julia, Ashley, Kylee, and I just went back to the flat to make dinner. The entire group is so exhausted everyone is tired all of the time. Anyway for dinner we were having spaghetti and a salad. The spaghetti was impossible to cook because our stove would not heat up! We ended up cooking it in the microwave like easy mac. Ha ha it was pretty sick and took for ever to cook, but we all still ate it. I worked on my pattern assignment for a little bit and then headed straight to bed because we had to get up at 4:30 am the next morning!