London, Part 3: When in London...

...stand in the rain and carry on. Then get afternoon tea.

Hi, Eliza Doolittle!

Our hotel was around the block from the British Museum, so we got up and headed over. Along with the rest of London, it seems. We stood in the security/entry line for quite a while- and much of it in the rain. Thankfully, we carried our raincoats with us everywhere.

We got inside and took a bit to get our bearings and figure out what we wanted to see. First up: the Rosetta Stone. 

We asked directions from a security guard who told us where to go and finished with, "look for the massive crowd and that's how you'll find it."

She wasn't wrong.

While we were in the UK, Claire's memory work for her school curriculum had bits about Mesopotamia, Sumer, and ancient Egypt, so I did my best to get a few pictures of articles from those civilizations to help ground her memory work a little bit.

I thought she'd especially appreciate these shiny things.

By the time we left the museum, the weather was GORGEOUS. #murphyslaw, right?

I very much wanted to have afternoon tea while we were in London, and after some research, we discovered that the afternoon tea at our hotel was one of our best options. How convenient!

Wowzers. This afternoon tea was fantastic! It was slightly Asian-themed, as the Tea at this hotel has been a fixture for a long time and has a neat history involving a Chinese immigrant family who was able to endear themselves into a difficult social landscape, against great odds.. Our host told us the story as he served our tea and explained each element. It was delicious and copious, and I'm so glad we did it!

After tea, we got our bags and began making our way to Paddington Station. I snapped this picture through the Tube door on our way:

Hi, Sherlock Holmes!

I was really looking forward to getting to roam around Paddington Station, hopefully finding Mr. Bear himself (and maybe get a souvenir for my Paddington-loving girls), but as we arrived, we discovered that there had been an accident on one of the train lines, and our train situation got a little messed up, causing us to have to get onto our train in a hurry. I GUESS I'LL HAVE TO GO BACK TO DO PADDINGTON STATION PROPERLY. But, we made the train and started our trek to Oxford for the final leg of our trip!