Museums and musical theatre

Previously, I saw the Mary Rose and then spent a ton of time on trains... 

The day after I got back from Portsmouth, I decided that it was about time I took myself to the British Museum. So I took the Tube to Holborn and then promptly got lost getting the whopping 500 metres from the Tube station to the museum.

It really shouldn't have been that difficult. There were sign posts pointing in the right direction, and I had Google Maps on my phone. AND YET. In the end, it took me the better part of half an hour and several "HOW IS THIS SO DIFFICULT WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME???" moments to eventually get in the door.

Well done, Kirsti. Well done.

Eventually I got there, though, and promptly headed into see the Egyptian collections, because that's what you do at the British Museum, yes?

Unfortunately, everyone else who visits the British Museum has basically the same idea, so the Egyptian section was horribly crowded. I made my way pretty quickly to the Assyrian collection, then through the Greek and Roman sections.

By the time I'd done all of that, my feet were pretty sore and it was basically lunchtime, so I headed to the cafeteria for a nice sit down. After a couscous salad and a Portuguese custard tart, I pressed on. Because the problem with the British Museum is that there's always more to see.

I made my way through the old library, which is now dedicated to displays about discovery and object collection through history, and which was easily the highlight for me. I think it's because it was such an eclectic mish-mash of stuff. You could wander up to any showcase and have absolutely no idea what it would contain. The books certainly didn't hurt!

Then it was on through the South and Central American collections to see some of my favourite objects (which I used in a mock exhibition at university in 2008!) before heading upstairs to the Anglo Saxon collections, especially the Sutton Hoo objects.

Next stop was the Lewis Chessmen, then through the displays of clocks and money - both of which were oddly fascinating - before heading into some of the newer Egyptian stuff. By the time I got there, I'd realised that I was basically going through the motions and wasn't really paying all that much attention to what I was seeing.

So I checked out the gift shops (obviously), bought precisely nothing because I decided that I had enough bookmarks, and made my way back to the Tube station - WITHOUT getting lost this time around. I headed to one of the numerous Prets for a hot chocolate and a sit down, then caught the train across to London Bridge to wait for C at his office. The view wasn't too shabby:

When C finished work, we caught the train around to Leicester Square and headed to a random Italian restaurant for an early dinner. I had lasagne because I'll basically always choose pasta if given the option, while C had a FREAKING ENORMOUS pizza. I wasn't convinced he could eat the whole thing by himself, but he was determined to prove me wrong...

What a dork.

Dinner over, it was on to our activity for the evening: The Book of Mormon.

And let me tell you, it was the most freaking magical thing I have ever seen in my life. I laughed basically non-stop from the time the curtain went up. I laughed so hard I ended up with a headache. And it's entirely possible that we spent an hour watching bits of it on YouTube when we got home. I loved literally every single second of it, and I would go and see it again in a heartbeat.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's coming to Melbourne any time soon, so I guess I'll just have to go back to London to see it again!

Next up, I head to Greenwich which contains a sad lack of Thor. 

K xx

200 miles on trains is too many miles

Previously: we went to the zoo and the red panda was actually doing stuff!! 

The following morning, I bid Sara a sad farewell as she headed off to work. Then I got myself organised, and walked half way across Portsmouth to the Historic Dockyard. I must have looked very confident about where I was going, because I got asked for directions twice. Thankfully, one person was looking for something that I'd just walked past five minutes earlier so I was able to help! The other one was less successful, however.

After about half an hour, I made it to the Dockyard. I'd been planning on seeing the HMS Victory as well as the Mary Rose, but given that I was planning on catching a train at about 1pm and it was already after 10am, I didn't really have the time. Or, you know, the money. They tried to sell me on an annual pass at the gate, but my accent combined with my "..........seriously??" face must have worked enough that they backed off pretty quickly. Also, there was a TARDIS there and literally no explanation for it. I *may* have flailed briefly before realising that it was almost certainly a prop.

Ultimately, I decided to go with the Mary Rose. The last time I saw the Mary Rose was probably 1994, and it was still just basically a big room that you walked through while they sprayed the ship with water and a separate museum building. Now? There's a fabulous museum incorporating the ship at the centre, spread across three levels and filled with information about all the different parts of the ship as well as the people who sailed on it.

At the moment, it's kind of hard to see the scale of the ship itself. They've finally finished spraying it with polyethylene glycol, and the ship is being dried so there are big drying tubes everywhere, and you just peep in at the ship at various points.

So that part was ever so slightly disappointing, but the museum itself was AWESOME.

All the exhibits were fascinating, and I loved how they were centred around various members of the crew, complete with facial reconstructions. But I think my favourite part was learning about the galley - how the stoves worked, how the food for each mess was kept separate, how they were able to have open fires and make bread and all kinds of stuff ON A FREAKING WOODEN SHIP.

I also may have sniggered more than was warranted over what these daggers looked like without their long-gone blades:

Eventually, I came to the end of the museum and made my way to the cafe for a fortifying double chocolate muffin and a sit down before walking back to Sara's. I passed HMS Victory, HMS Warrior, and Spinnaker Tower on the way:

After another half hour walk, I staggered up the four flights of stairs to Sara's apartment, drank a massive glass of water, went for a wee, grabbed my suitcase, headed back down the stairs, and dragged my suitcase the kilometre to the train station. It was about as fun as you'd anticipate. I was a little worried that I'd miss the train I'd planned on catching, but I made it with enough time to buy a ticket and chill out for five minutes before jumping on the train.

It took about two hours to get to Waterloo, and thankfully the train was almost empty for most of the trip so I didn't feel guilty for taking up a block of four seats with all my stuff. When I got back to London, I then had to trek from Waterloo to London Bridge to get the house keys from C, then head back to his place to dump all my stuff.

I had a whopping 45 minutes in which to collapse on the sofa before heading out again to meet C at Kings Cross and jump on a train to Cambridge. The train was crowded with commuters, so we ended up spending the trip sitting very uncomfortably in a luggage rack. Upon arrival in Cambridge, we hightailed it down the road to The Cambridge Blue. We were meeting up with friends of C's from Melbourne who happened to be in Cambridge for a couple of days.

I have literally no idea what I ate, because it was months ago, but I seem to remember it being delicious. Also, shout out to the girl behind the bar who didn't bat an eyelid when I walked up and said "My brother wants a pint of something hoppy, and he said "surprise me"..." because C was sitting between a small child and the wall and couldn't order his own damned beer.

After a couple of hours, the small child was getting cranky, so we said our goodbyes and headed back to the train station to discover that we'd just pissed a train and there was a half hour wait for the next one. Obviously, I went to the M&S at the station and bought up on Percy Pigs. It shouldn't have taken that long to get back to Kings Cross, but TWICE on the way back, the train lost power. The first time, all the lights went out and we were all just sitting there on a stopped train wondering if we were about to be attacked by Dementors*.

Then the driver made an announcement along the lines of "I have no idea what's going on, but I'll try and work it out", and then proceeded to wander through the train with a torch opening panels and investigating things. We finally rolled - literally. It was like the train was running on fumes - into Kings Cross about 45 minutes later than we should have. Thankfully, we didn't have far to go to get back to C's, where I promptly collapsed into bed. Which isn't surprising considering my Fitbit tells me I walked 18.35km that day!

Basically, this. 

*may just have been me.

K xx

Next time, I suck at navigating and go to the theatre. 

Everybody likes a crispy bottom

Previously, we went to Sintra, where it poured with rain. We saw a bunch of palaces and had to sell a kidney or two to pay for a round of drinks. 

We briefly debated going back to Sintra the next day because there was still more to see and do, but ultimately decided to break things up a bit with a trip across to Belem, which is a waterfront suburb of Lisbon. It's about 15 minutes on the tram from where we were staying, and the day started off with C and I realising that none of us had enough money on our travel cards to actually get to Belem and running across the main plaza to the train station in search of a machine to top them up. Running because the next tram was due in like 16 minutes and we figured that would be enough time to get over there, top up the cards, and get back.

Turns out, it was, but the machines were ridiculously slow so we cut things pretty close. When we got to Belem, we wandered through a park and stumbled across this statue:

Given that there's a statue of him, he's presumably important in some way. But there were no signs or markers identifying him, and Google Maps is of no assistance. Womp womp.

Eventually, we made our way down to the Monument of the Discoveries (Padrão dos Descobrimentos for those of you who prefer Portuguese). The giant map in the forecourt was pretty awesome, although impossible to take photos of courtesy of dozens of tourists. C did better than I did, so I totally stole this photo from him:

Damned tourists...

The monument itself wasn't particularly exciting. I mean, it's kind of pretty. But it's also pretty depressing when you think about the fact that the men depicted on said monument are responsible for the deaths of millions upon millions of indigenous peoples and the destruction of a ton of societies and environments. So, you know, there's that...

We paid the €3 fee to take the elevator up to the top, and I have to say that the view was pretty damned great.

You know, until we noticed that massive rain cloud up there rapidly heading in our direction... We scurried back to the bottom of the tower and managed to take a few pictures of the outside before it started to pour with rain. Sideways rain. Torrential sideways rain.

We ended up sheltering around one side of the monument, which stopped the worst of the rain hitting us, and luckily the rain didn't last too long. But it did look like it was going to return relatively soon, so we hightailed it over to the monastery with intentions of going to the National Maritime Museum. Due to my inability to focus, we ended up at the National Archaeology Museum instead (in my defence, they're essentially next door to each other) and didn't realise until we were half way through an exhibit on Roman culture. I blame general vagueness and the fact that they had a huge exhibit about shipwrecks...

On the plus side, the exhibit about Roman culture meant that C and I got to nerd out and spend like 15 minutes trying to translate gravestones from Latin. Because we're cool like that...

Once we'd exhausted all the possibilities at the museum, we headed in the direction of our REAL aim in coming to Belem: Casa Pasteis de Belem, home of the much loved Portuguese custard tart which was apparently invented just up the road at the monastery that was to be our next stop. It was pretty busy, and the wait time for service was pretty terrible, but I can highly recommend the toasted cheese sandwiches. And the pasteis de Belem were TO DIE FOR:

LOOK HOW CRISPY OMFG.

Once we had custard tart food babies and my poor, gluten intolerant mother had glared at us for long periods of time, we headed back to the Jerónimos Monastery. And if you think I didn't have the Eleventh Doctor bouncing around in my head the whole time, you're very wrong. There wasn't a whole lot of information provided about the monastery, from memory, but it was pretty damned spectacular, inside and out.

The church was amazing, and included the tomb of Vasco da Gama, the first European to reach India by sea, which is a pretty incredible feat.

We finished at the monastery not long before they closed for the day and then speed walked the one and a bit kilometres to Belem Tower, sneaking in with about 10 minutes to spare before last entry. Phew!

There's not really a whole lot to see at Belem Tower. The interior is basically empty with a few story panels on each level to tell you about the original purpose of that floor of the tower. But, you know, there was this gargoyle of a monkey playing the violin, so that's something!

From there, we headed back to the tram and started making our way back into the city. But part way there, the trams were all stopped by a firetruck blocking the tracks and we were told that we'd have to take a bus instead. Of course, no one spoke English and we had no idea where the buses were going or where we were, so we ended up jumping on a bus that SEEMED to indicate that it was going to the city centre and hoped for the best.

It didn't go quite where we thought it would, but somehow we ended up at a surprisingly good restaurant half way up a big flight of stairs with bird cages full of finches out the front. I have zero idea of what it was called, but I can tell you that the food was pretty damned tasty, they had no qualms about adding or removing things from their dishes, and I ended up having a sweet potato cake with olive oil ice cream from dessert solely because it sounded so intriguing. Definitely weird but still pretty tasty!

Next up, we head back to Sintra to visit some more national palaces, because apparently Portugal has a million of them. 

K xx