A supposedly fun thing we'll probably do again

We thought it would be a good idea to go to the Tower of London on the holiday weekend.

Thousands of other people had the same idea, and the place was packed, though perhaps not more than normal.

We did get a look at the crown jewels before the lines got too long (no pictures allowed), and we made our way through the suits of armour in the White Tower and wandered the ramparts.

Charles I's Armour

And then we left, feeling as though we didn't quite get our money's worth, even on a two-for-one deal.

s. thought the Tower Ravens were the best.

We will probably do something like this again--paying too much for an underwhelming visit to a major tourist attraction that has been dumbed down for the masses--but for now it is nice to be able to cross the Tower of London off our bucket list, and move on.

Fortunately, the outing picked up from there. After some coffee we left the crowds behind, and wandered through part of the core of old London.

The bombed-out ruins of St. Dunstan's Church

Our first goal in "The City" was the monument to the great fire of London:

And by that point we were close enough to St. Paul's Cathedral that we decided to press on despite protests from our junior member:

A double-decker bus ride got us back to Kings Cross in time to make a last-minute stop at the British Library to view their freely accessible Treasures of the British Library exhibit--easily the highlight of the trip. (No pictures allowed again, so you'll have to imagine priceless manuscripts, or click here for a virtual tour.)

The crown jewels are nice, but they don't compare to Codex Sinaiticus and the Magna Carta.

Boxing Week Rorshach Test

t. and I independently bought each other the same day planner at Heffers, our new favourite Cambridge bookstore:

Great minds think alike, I guess.

s. opted for a more uplifting tome:

Where Mindfulness for Cats offers:

The Perpetual Disappointments Diary advises:

Oh wait, I got them reversed...

Christmas Adam in Ely

We spent the day a short train ride north of Cambridge, in the isle of Ely ...

... home to the third-largest medieval cathedral in the UK:

Unlike many other "medieval" churches in the area, which were extensively rebuilt in modern times, much of Ely Cathedral apparently goes back to the 300-year period between 1083–1375 when the cathedral was more-or-less under construction (see Wikipedia for the details). Unfortunately, Reformation iconoclasm did a number on the stained glass, carvings, and paintings, so the artwork is primarily Victorian:

We got the package deal, which included what for this acrophobe was a harrowing hike up the central octogonal tower. A view of the "lantern" in the central tower:

In the lantern:

A view from the lantern:

 At the top of the central tower:

 As usual, s's favourite part was feeding ducks:

  

Highlights from the British Museum

We made it out to the British Museum last weekend, enjoying our first London Tube ride in situ along the way. S., along with a crowd of other people, was excited at the prospect of seeing the archaeological discovery that enabled scholars to decode Egyptian hieroglyphs:

The Rosetta Stone, British Museum,

After visiting Athens in 2013, I wanted to see the Elgin Marbles that used to adorn the Parthenon. (At the beginning of the 19th century, Lord Elgin received permission from the Ottoman government to take away "pieces of stone with old inscriptions or figures thereon." The priceless rock he carted off surely exceeded what the Sultan had in mind.)

The Egyptian exhibits were stunning, as one would expect:

Amenhotep III's left arm

But I was most surprised and astounded by the Assyrian artifacts. Here, for instance, is a Lamassu from Khorsabad that apparently goes back to the reign of Sargon II in the late 8th century BCE:

More exciting still is a series of wall panels depicting Sennacherib's siege of Lachish in 701 BCE:

Sennacherib's capture of Lachish is mentioned in Isaiah 36:1-2; it is also described first-hand in a series of letters inscribed on ostraca that were discovered when Lachish was excavated in the 1930's.

On a final dash through the second floor, I snapped pictures of various 1st-century Roman emperors for use in class:

The Emperor Augustus

If it were not for the incentive of seeing real mummies...

... we would have missed the Cyrus Cylinder, which describes Cyrus's policy of repatriating subject peoples to their homelands:

Admission is free, so it is churlish to complain that the museum is simply too large to take in on a single visit. The contents could easily be divided into a half-dozen world-class museums. 

I guess that means I'll need to go back.

A Cambridge November

In Saskatchewan, the leaves are long gone by the end of October. Not so, in Cambridge.

Waterbeach, Oct 30

Watching the Cambridge Head Race, November 18

Milton Country Park, November 19

Re-purposed Gravel Pit, Milton Country Park

Leper Chapel, November 26

On November 29, there was a primary school "football" game:

And on November 30, we had snow:

 

Tomorrow, unless we encounter a "road blocker in situ", two of us plan to essay a trip to the British Museum in London, while the third works on her rather more prosaic essay back home.