Sitting at a cafe in Heathrow Airport's Terminal 3
This morning we had breakfast and sat around in the room till it was nearly 10 a.m., before taking a short walk to the British Museum - which is actually really easy to find so who knows how we got lost last year.I approached the familiar columns of the museum's entrance at exactly 10 a.m. and entered the airy Great Court with three hours to explore the place.
My main goal was to see the mummies in the Egyptian room upstairs, but I couldn't find a shortcut there so I decided to just make my way through the upper rooms (most of which I had missed previously) until I stumbled upon it.
I chose to start my walk at the Rosetta Stone, before making my way past the Nineveh palace sculptures and up the West Stairs, which were lined with large mosaics.
Then I continued sloooooooooowly through the rooms full of artefacts from ancient Cyprus and pre-Roman Italy, passing by red-figure and black-figure pottery, gold items and jewellery, and terracotta and marble sculptures. Oh, and I finally found out how a cylinder seal looked like.
There were also a few sarcophagi on display, the most interesting of which belonged to an Etruscan lady. Her skeleton was found inside and scientists used her skull to reconstruct her face - mostly to check if she really looked like her tomb effigy. You decide. ;)
I continued into the Roman rooms, which contained (among may other things) statues and busts of various Roman emperors and their family members.
Then I reached a dead end in the HSBC Money Gallery (full of coins through history), so I backtracked out of the previous rooms and headed into the Ancient Levant rooms, which started with a reconstruction of a mesolithic burial site.
I was beginning to run out of time, so I made my way quickly through the rooms, passing more pottery, cylinder seals, and the Royal Game of Ur again.
After which I finally found myself in the mummy room! It was crammed full of glass cases so the room wasn't very spacious; it didn't help that it was also the most crowded room so far, with many schoolkids trying to squeeze through.
But the collection was impressive nonetheless. Most of the coffins were empty and stood with their richly-decorated lids open, revealing surprisingly brightly-painted interiors.
The room also held other funerary objects, like tablets, portraits, amulets and figurines of afterlife servants.
But I was completely distracted by the creepy mummified bodies lying amongst the colourful artefacts!
I squeezed out of the room and made my way down the nearest flight of stairs (past the Asian collections) before arriving in the Living and Dying Gallery, which contained my favourite Easter Island statue, as well as a small display of Taoist funerary items.
Then it was time to shop!
I browsed through the enticing merchandise on sale in the main giftshop, the bookshop, and the children's shop, before returning to the main giftshop.
My £10 got me a book on ancient games (with fold-out game boards), a purple British Museum pen, and a mummy bookmark.
Then it was time to say goodbye to the Rosetta Stone before I made my way back to the hotel for my takeaway hot and sour soup.
Soon after we were out on Oxford Street again for some last-minute souvenir shopping, before we hopped onto our taxi and rode to the airport.
We initially wanted to take the earlier flight out (hence leaving for the airport four hours earlier), but it turned out to be too much of a hassle, so we've been killing time in the (boring) departure lounge since.
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