I've been to London twice before, so this time I skipped the usual tourist attractions to take in a few things I haven't seen, like the British Museum. It recalls the days of British Empire when bringing home a few souvenirs from your foreign trip meant packing up an entire temple or two.
The building itself is quite spectacular with the largest indoor covered square in Europe. Being indoors and free, I didn't mind springing for the audio guide of museum highlights.
The rosetta stone was awesome. You hear about its role in translating Egyptian hieroglyphs for the first time, but it's amazing to stand in front of the thing and realize it exists. Napoleon nabbed it from its original location. There are so many Egyptian antiquities you wonder what's left in Egypt. And what museum would be complete without a few mummified cats!
What really blew me away were the antiquities from the part of the world that is now Iraq, amazing art from the centuries before Christ. I've been talking a lot about the media training needs in present-day Iraq but these powerful stone carvings speak of the region's rich artistic heritage.
One of my favorite things about the museum is how it is actively used by Brits, especially schoolchildren who come to make drawings and write compositions about what they see.
These kids are drawing stone carvings from the Parthenon, but one man's historical appreciation is another man's plunder: the Greeks want these artifacts back in Athens.
I've been to London twice before, so this time I skipped the usual tourist attractions to take in a few things I haven't seen, like the British Museum. It recalls the days of British Empire when bringing home a few souvenirs from your foreign trip meant packing up an entire temple or two.
The building itself is quite spectacular with the largest indoor covered square in Europe. Being indoors and free, I didn't mind springing for the audio guide of museum highlights.
The rosetta stone was awesome. You hear about its role in translating Egyptian hieroglyphs for the first time, but it's amazing to stand in front of the thing and realize it exists. Napoleon nabbed it from its original location. There are so many Egyptian antiquities you wonder what's left in Egypt. And what museum would be complete without a few mummified cats!
What really blew me away were the antiquities from the part of the world that is now Iraq, amazing art from the centuries before Christ. I've been talking a lot about the media training needs in present-day Iraq but these powerful stone carvings speak of the region's rich artistic heritage.
One of my favorite things about the museum is how it is actively used by Brits, especially schoolchildren who come to make drawings and write compositions about what they see. 
These kids are drawing stone carvings from the Parthenon, but one man's historical appreciation is another man's plunder: the Greeks want these artifacts back in Athens.
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