buckingham and the british museum

I'm back in the UK again, this time for 12 nights. I canceled my original plan for this weekend due to rainy weather (I guess I couldn't escape it for long) and hung around London instead. It's been a pretty lazy weekend, but I did get out both yesterday and today to see a couple things.

Saturday's main event was a visit to Buckingham Palace. If I had planned the day better, I would have gone in the morning, since the wait to get in is quite long. First, you have to wait in line for 30-45 minutes just to get a ticket, and then your ticket is for a specific time. In my case, I waited 40 minutes in line to get a ticket that required that I come back 2.5 hours later. Unfortunately, since it was raining and I neither had an umbrella nor saw a place that sold umbrellas nearby, I just hung around the outside of the palace the whole time. Talk about boring. After a while, I wised up and pulled out my iPad and watched "24" episodes whilst standing in line. I don't know what was more entertaining--the show itself, or people staring and pointing at the iPad.

As expected, no pictures were permitted inside the palace. It really is a sight to behold, however, and is totally worth visiting even if you can't take pictures. There's tons of priceless art, ornate carvings, and opulence that is unparalleled, at least, in my travels. I only saw the state rooms, where foreign dignitaries are received, but I imagine the rest of the palace is just as grand.

Here's the outside of the palace and the gardens (this is what you see when you're done with the state rooms):







After the tour, I walked back to the front of the palace and took pictures of it an the surrounding area, since it had stopped raining.

Here's what you typically see of Buckingham Palace on TV:



Across the way is this monument:



Taking a walk down the street isn't too bad, either:



It started to rain again, this time much harder than before. So, I took shelter under Wellington Arch:



It took about 30 minutes for the rain to die down, and when it did, I cut my adventures short and headed back to the hotel, not knowing when it would rain again.

Today's adventure was a visit to the British Museum, which is said to house one of the finest collections of antiquities from all over the world. From that standpoint, it was probably the best museum I've ever been to. Its collections of ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian items are the largest and most extensive I've ever seen. There were also some cool temporary exhibits, like one that focused on the evolution of money over the centuries. Here are some of my favorite items from my visit:

Etruscan statues:



Greek statue:



More Greek stuff:





Egyptian mummies:





Chinese porcelain:



16th century Korean book that teaches the then-new Korean hangul. Being a language nerd, I was fascinated by how close the pronunciation of many of the words was to Cantonese:



Statue from Easter Island:



Islamic astrolabe:



Islamic pottery:



Persian pottery:



English statue:



One interesting thing that I noticed about the museum is how popular certain exhibitions were versus other. The Egyptian halls were, by far, the most crowded areas of the museum. The least crowded areas? The Chinese, Japanese and Korean areas. It often seemed that, other than me, the only people in there were Chinese, Japanese and Korean people. This is kind of like the Asian restaurant phenomenon that I've noticed. When I have Chinese colleagues come to the US for work and I offer to take them out to eat, they typically ask me if we can go to a Chinese restaurant. Why would you travel thousands of miles to experience the same stuff you can get at home (usually for a better price and with better quality)? I just don't get it.

Anyway, I was very impressed with both places. If you're ever here, strap on your most comfortable pair of shoes and see 'em both. You'll be glad you did.