Tours (not the city in France)

I already told you all about my little sleeping adventure yesterday (sleeping from 7:30 to 11:30). Well that completely screwed up my sleeping (duhhh). So I ended up eating dinner at around midnight and then went on skype and talked to my mom, sister, and john until about 4 am. Then I went to bed again and woke up at 9. It was weird. Trust me. I had to shave today which wouldn't be newsworthy but when I shaved I left a goatee. Don't worry I shaved it off. I just wanted to see what it looked like. I kind of want one but I don't have the guts to keep it. We'll see what happens in the future.

So I got ready and walked over the to British Museum. The British Museum was started in 1753. It was the first public gallery ever. It was started by a guy named Sir Hans Sloane. He had over 80,000 things laying around his house so he decided to donate them after he died. Thus we have the British Museum. The museum offers a ton of tours. Some cost money but they offer a bunch of 40 minute tours on specific topics for free. The tours are done by volunteers but they are all very knowledgeable. Obviously, those are the ones I did. I think there are 13 different tours spread out over the day. I tackled four of them today. Ancient Greece, the Enlightenment, Art of the Middle East, and Ancient Rome.

The Ancient Greece tour had the best tour guide. I never caught his name though. There was a pretty cute blond girl on the tour too. She was almost as tall as me. She was from Newcastle and seemed pretty nice. We talked during the breaks a little bit but that was all. On the tour, we saw a water holder (vase like thing) from 580 BC (picture 1 with cute blonde girl in front of it). It was the first Greek vase with the painter's name and the Gods' names that we know of. We also saw a vase with a picture of Achilles killing an amazon woman. We saw two different examples of pottery, black figure and red figure. Black figure is just painting a little bit black and then scrapping it away to make black figures (like on picture 1). Red figure is painting the whole pot black and then scrapping away the black to make red figures (picture 2). There was a big tomb made from a guy on the Turkish peninsula. The big part of the tour though was seeing the Parthenon sculptures which I already saw with my Art History class. The tour guide had a different spin on it though so it wasn't boring at all. I asked the tour guide after where to go in Greece after my program and he said "Athens, Delphi, and Crete". So there you have it.

The next tour I went on was about the Enlightenment and it took place in the King's Library. So called because originally, the room held all the stuff that King George II gave the country when he died. Now, it is an exhibit about the enlightenment period (17th and 18th century). The enlightenment was a time where people were discovering and challenging what people previously thought about the world, past and present. There was a lot of learning going on. There are a few different areas to the room. One area was natural history. Not what you think though. Like there was a tea set shaped like corn because corn was only discovered (in Europe) in the 1600's.There were bowls shaped like shells and paper collages of exotic flowers. They used to name fossils after Bible stories like some snail fossils were called "the devil's toenails" (middle of picture 3). Haha. There was an ax from 400,000 BC that was discovered under an Inn in London. During the enlightenment, people would go on "Grand Tours" and steal stuff from the sights and bring them back. That's where a lot of the stuff came from. There was also a ton of stuff from Captain Cook's voyages. My favorite piece was a club from Vancouver (picture 4). It was a club made by the Indians there probably used to kill fish or something but it has sea otters teeth on it and glass from Venice. That's how much the world shrunk, that an Indian tribe in Vancouver had Venetian glass. Sweet.

I had lunch out on the steps but soon after moved in because of all the people smoking out there. The next tour was Art of the Middle East. There was a qur'an from Spain or North Africa written in the 11th century. The calligraphy looked cool. The main art forms we saw were ceramics, metal work and calligraphy. We saw a ton of ceramics. There were plates and dishes from the 8th century. My favorite pieces of the tour was the glassware from 1150 which was gilded and then enameled, which is very tricky to do apparently (picture 5). They looked nice in the light. Another example of ceramics was a whole bunch of different tiles with different colors and textures. They would cover entire buildings with tiles. In India, they made a turtle out of a single piece of Jade. It was really big and super life like which is amazing because Jade is a really hard material (they had to use diamond tipped tools). We also saw examples of metalwork like some plates and a vase that had 20 or 30 tiny parakeets hammered out of it (picture 6). That must have taken a long time.

My last tour was Ancient Rome. It was shortest one but still had some good stuff. There was a head of the first Roman emperor, Augustus (picture 7). It was from Egypt. After Augustus took over, he sent out bigger than life statues of himself across the world to announce that people were now in the EMPIRE and he was EMPEROR. Some people who disagreed took off his head and buried it in front of their temple so that every time they entered their temple, they stepped on his head. Good thing they did that because now it is preserved. There was the Portland Vase (picture 8) which was from 5-25 AD. It took a lot of work by a bunch of people. They had to make the vase out of black material and then cover it and fire it again with the white. Then they had to scrape away the white. It was broken in 1900 but pieced back together. There was some armor made out of crocodile skin taken from a tribe in Africa that worshiped crocodiles. We also saw some silver dining plates and tea sets from 260 AD. When the Germanic tribes came and raided towns, people would bury their silver in the ground. Now we have it.

After all those tours, I was kind of wiped out so I walked back to the flat and worked on that last blog entry. Then I ate dinner and sat around and pretty soon here I am going to go to bed. That's all for my day I guess. I really liked the Museum and learned a lot today. Hopefully, I can go back soon for some other tours.

Bye!