Totally Terrific Travels: British Museum

At risk of overloading the kids with too much museuming, we ventured out to the British Museum today. Alongside the Louvre, it's one of the world's greatest museums, and it looked like we could see a few cool things without a kid mutiny. And we had also reserved a traditional British tea at the British Museum's restaurant as a perk.

Unexpectedly, the British museum is way different than the Louvre. It's insanely accessible. Admission is free. And rather than having room upon room of artifacts, it's much more compact, with all the good stuff from an era in one place.

To start, there was a room dedicated to the Enlightenment, a peaceful period in history where archaeology became important. The collection for the British museum began at this time. Each section of the Enlightenment room had pieces from different eras. One especially cool part was a hands-on exhibit, where you could touch ancient Egyptian vases, fossils over 150,000 years old, an axe head used by the Neanderthals and more. This was all supervised by a knowledgeable docent. The rest of the room had more from each period.

Further along, we found the Rosetta Stone, as well as a single room full of the best of ancient Egyptian sculpture. We even peered into the sarcophagus of Ramses (where my mom fell and broke her hip some 15 years ago). The curators had smartly arranged their best pieces in one easy to visit room. Brilliant.

The kids peering into the sarcophagus.

They also had an exhibit of The History of the Horse, which showed how horses were wed and valued for several thousands of years, and how current thoroughbred racehorses come from one of three sires from the 1800s. It was pretty cool.

We were psyched to experience a traditional English Tea, and we ordered a set of finger sandwiches, desserts and scones. Sadly, Sue has had better tea in San Francisco, and while we enjoyed it, we were feeling slightly underwhelmed. Apparently the British Museum is not the best place for English Tea.