British Museum, Rain, John Lewis shopping, Rain......

Today we knew we were in London...cloudy, gray skies, rain projected.  But....we never let the weather dictate to us.  We were awakened with the delivery of coffee and cookies to our room, moved slowly since we knew today would be a museum day and we didn't have any schedule to keep.  After breakfast, we headed to the Marble Arch tube station...feeling like pros re: local transportation...no change of trains and just a few stops to Tottenham Court and a walk in the rain to the British Museum.  The exterior was worn with chipped paint and dirty steps...not what we had expected - then we walked inside and it took our breath away.  We stayed for far longer than we had planned...I had the strange notion that we could do 3 museums today - NOT!!  We stayed until my legs wouldn't go any further.  Had a very interesting Welcoming tour of the Enlightenment room with a docent who shared lots of background stories about the collections of Sloane and then explored the Egyptian and Greek exhibits and the Lindow Man who was found in a British bog after being buried for 2000 years!  Gruesome but interesting.  This museum is remarkable; it could take days to see it all and it was free!

We walked out into the rain - used my Dollar store umbrellas to cross the street to, what else, a Starbucks!.. Shared a panini and had our coffee fix then headed out to the tube to check out John Lewis - a large department store with prices we could afford (as opposed to Harrod's where we couldn't afford most things!  We'll go to Harrod's as a tourist visit later in the week if we have the time. John Lewis is a beautiful store, owned by the employees and guaranteeing the best prices on the products they carry.  They had a 2012 Olympics store where we wanted to buy T shirts, but at 25 GBP per shirt, with a conversion rate to about $37, we passed :).

So back to the hotel with a souvenir canvas tote bag for 1.95 GBP that went to charity - the last of the big spenders,  Drinks and snacks in the lounge and now out to dinner at a local Brasserie recommended by the concierge....review pending.

British Museum pictures