With a side trip to Bath
Lucy, our niece, was attending graduate school in London. Being the closest family members to the UK, we decided to visit her. What could possibly go wrong?
Well… lots of things can go wrong. In this case, Lucy got a pretty bad case of covid just as we arrived. Sadly, we only got to see her for too short a period. But seeing her for any length of time was a treat.
We’ve been to London many times before. It’s easy to get around, and there’s so much to see and do. It was very cold and a bit rainy while we were there, but that didn’t put a damper on our visit.
We stayed at an Airbnb near Farringdon Station, which was very convenient. We visited the British Museum, which was, as always, exhausting. We took time to visit the Elgin Marbles – perhaps these will be repatriated to Greece. We also visited the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology at University College. This may the largest collection of artifacts outside of Egypt, but it’s definitely the most overwhelming. This claustrophobic museum is filled with old-style glass display cases jammed with small artifacts. The placards are hand-typed and unfortunately give little information. But their collection is impressive and it was an interesting adjunct to the collection at the British Museum.
We visited the Tate Modern, walked endlessly through districts we’d never seen, and then strolled past Buckingham Palace and Parliament. While we found restaurants stunningly expensive by U.S standards, we found some historic pubs to drink in, had some great fish & chips, and had a notable meal in a Sri Lankan restaurant. We also had the requisite meat pie one evening. A highlight of the trip was seeing our dear friends Tony and Erika in Bath, and also meeting Susan’s friend Mara for a lovely Indian breakfast
On the last day, as Lucy was recovering – and the weather cooperated — we got to spend time with her. While we had hoped to see more of her, it was great to see her thriving in her master’s program.
