British Museum

(Katherine) We woke rather early to make sure that we could clean up the living room before our gracious host, Dan, came downstairs. Once he appeared, we had a chance to recap our evening with him, and also discuss our plans for London that day. He recommended the British Museum since he knew we were headed to Egypt on our journey. Apparently when you visit the museum in Cairo, they often refer to the works in the British Museum because the Brits acquired a lot of their best pieces. We finally said our goodbyes and HUGE thank you’s, and headed out for the day. We ducked in for a tasty lunch at a place called Café Amor, and then made our way to the museum.

Given that Robert got to see his favorite producer at Fabric last night, I thought it was fair that I declared we were going to spend all of our time focused on the Egyptian exhibits - specifically, the mummies. I’ve been fascinated with the Egyptian rituals associated with mummification and their beliefs regarding death since childhood. The entire burial process is part of the preparation to send you on to the next life - they believe that you should spent this life getting ready for the next. They had some excellent mummies on display - one unwrapped mummy even still had her eyelashes and fingernails preserved! We also went downstairs to the Egyptian sculptures room where we saw the Rosetta Stone, a thank you letter to the Greek which was etched in a stone tablet. This stone eventually helped to decipher hieroglyphics in the early 1800’s because it was written in Hieroglyphics, a shorthand version of the language, and Greek (3 languages total).

After a couple of hours we decided to head outside and grab a final fish & chips at a nearby pub before making our way to the bus station. Unfortunately, they would not accept our ticket for Sunday and had to purchase a whole new ticket - another annoyance of our London apartment rental debacle. Regardless, we returned back to Brighton to the welcome arms of Erika and Mark, where Erika had prepared a wonderful dinner which included her mother’s famous German potato salad. After dinner, we walked around the Brighton Pier for a while and snapped a few photos before all of the lights turned off. Ah - it felt nice to be back with loving friends after our nerve-wracking London excursion!