4th of July in London

After walking what feels like 500 miles in the past two days, I feel like I must have seen most of London already but I haven't even caught a glimpse of the Thames yet! That might have to wait for a day trip from Oxford - I'll be coming back for the street markets, too, which I unfortunately could not locate today.

Yesterday, (the fourth) I slept in later than I meant to, and went from the Queen Elizabeth to the Fulham Broadway Underground Station to Earl's Court Station to Tottenham Court Station, where I was lost for several minutes but with the help of 4 or 5 very friendly Brits, I finally found the British Museum.

I feel like I rushed through, but I saw so many of the exhibits that I must have spent at least 3 hours there. There was a crowd around the Rosetta Stone, so I just waved to it in passing. My personal favorite part of the visit was the Ancient Egypt section, where there were lots of mummies and very fancy sarcophagi but my absolute favorite thing there were several mummified cats, which were preserved and decorated almost as thoroughly as the human remains were. Just like the human shrouds often had the person's face painted on it, the cat mummies also had cat faces painted on them. Crazy cat-owners are obviously nothing new.

I also browsed the renaissance and the early middle-east, it was all very violent. I'd say the thing that I enjoyed the second most was the early Greek architecture and mythology. I had to take a few pictures of that - it was so cool.

I did a little shopping at the British Museum gift shop and got myself a little Egyptian cat statue to go with my wooden elephants from Thailand. I also found something for Keith:

...but I figured he has enough stuff already.

After the British Museum, I wandered to Leicester Square, which was full of people, in the West End. Surrounded by so many Brits on Independence Day, I suddenly had an urge to scream "GOD BLESS AMERICA!" Ultimately, I thought better of it. On my way I came across the National Portrait Gallery and stopped in to look at the portraits that were nominated for this year's BP National Portrait Award. I thought the winner was definitely worthy, but my favorites included an artist's painting of her mother, another artist's painting of his wife and cat in a doorway, and a multimedia project that several artists collaborated on that featured local high school students in an audiovisual presentation. There was also a video of David Beckham sleeping, which reminded me of that scene with Amy Adams from "Her." (Mom knows what I'm talking about.)

Here's the winner: Man with a Plaid Blanket  by Thomas Ganter

I don't know what it is about this next one, but I really loved it:

Portrait of Jean Yves, a man looking like Vincent Van Gogh by Gauthier Hubert

Here's the portrait of the artist's mother:

Mother #1 by Yunsung Jang

And finally Andrea and Myrtle - I love that Myrtle is sitting and staring right at you just the way that Rosie always does.

Andrea and Myrtle, by Simon Davis

After the portrait gallery, I bought myself a fantastic dress which I later spilled Haagen-Dasz on and I'm still unsure whether or not I'll be able to clean it off.

I was wandering around Soho when I came across the theatre where Martin Freeman is performing in "Richard III." I went in to ask about tickets and they were all sold out, but the woman at the desk told me to "queue" outside for any returned tickets. I went back outside and got behind two Australian students with whom I immediately struck up a conversation and subsequently spent the rest of the evening with, although we did not end up seeing Richard III.

Their names were Joanne and Marcel, and they're both animation students from Sydney. Marcel and I talked comics for a long time and then we eventually gave up on Richard III and went to the discount ticket booth, where we got tickets to Miss Saigon at the Prince Edward Theatre instead.

The show was fantastic - I've never seen it before, so the whole thing was new to me. The actors were incredible and the crew did a lot of really cool stuff with the set and lighting. Miss Saigon herself was so good that she made me cry. We were really high up in the "grand circle," but it was good enough for me. Afterwards it occurred to me that there are very few less American things I could have done on Independence Day than explore London and see Miss Saigon live. I saw on a newspaper that there was a party at the Benjamin Franklin house for the Americans of London, but unfortunately it had already happened by the time I heard about it.

Marcel and Joanne and I parted ways after the show, even though I would've loved to hang around in Soho for longer - it was a totally different place after the sun went down. (Several travel guides have called it the "gay capital" of London.) I didn't want to do the long walk back to my hostel from the tube station after midnight, but in retrospect I think I was worrying unnecessarily because at 10:30 at night, Chelsea was very, very tame. I collapsed in bed with a foolproof plan to get up at 8:30 the next morning in time for breakfast.