Quintessential London: our hotel room, laundry, and the British Museum

London is just massive. Almost 10 million people live here. I’ve had a few moderately successful visits over the years and London has remained squarely in the middle of the pack of cities I enjoy. London comes in way above Los Angeles for me but we haven’t bonded like I’ve bonded with Paris.

So I started small this visit: not with a museum or Buckingham Palace – but, instead, getting to know this LG washer/dryer in our apartment. I’m no fool – I know these combi-machines are slow – so I chose the 30 minute wash and the 53 minute dry. That is 83 minutes, last I checked.

Total wash time for our laundry? 16 hours. And I don’t mean 16 hours and it’s washed and dried. I mean 16 hours and it’s washed and then everything got locked in the machine, dryer running for hours with “CD” on the display (internet tells me that it means cool down). At the 7 hour mark, I tried to rescue our trapped stuff but finally just went to bed.

When I came out this morning, I was able to get the clothing and, while it wasn’t dry in the sense that you would want to wear it anywhere on your body/have any contact with it, it wasn’t dripping water either, and so I’m going to count that as my first London success.

I misled you when I said “London apartment” up above. What we have, actually, is a suite at the 5-star Taj Buckingham Gate hotel. Obviously, we have no business being in a suite at a place like this. I found a good deal on their cheapest room, joined the Taj Club for free breakfast, and booked a pretty reasonable package for an extremely expensive city.

So I should have been suspicious when they gave us a free upgrade, given there are Rolls Royces and Bentleys parked outside, and I showed up in my H and M sweater on Day 23 of wearing the same North Face fleece. It turns out they’re doing construction in the unit above us, and so it feels like we’re sitting in a bunker underneath a rugby match or someone is running a very large dance recital above us.

What makes it a suite, I think, is the sheer square footage. A lot of it is this hallway right as we enter:

How can they allocate so much space for a hallway in London, where land is so precious? I believe they took it from the bathrooms. We have two of them here but neither one is capable of performing all the requisite bathroom duties, so it’s no luxury to have them both – it’s a lifesaving requirement.

Here is the shower in the bathroom that is big enough to really “enjoy”. (Note: the other bathroom can be “enjoyed” too, but it’s a little nerve wracking because the toilet seat is not attached to the toilet). It’s a huge step up, has no actual shower head, and has a partial glass enclosure that offers no real “enclosing” and gaps at the bottom.

We’ve both chosen to shower here instead, in the other 5-star bathroom, with the free-floating toilet seat: (one star for hot water, one for cold water, one for having a door that closes, one for being too small to slip in, and one for…hmmm)

Next up? Some actual travel information! We went to the British Museum – documenting the entirety of human culture from from the dawn of time until now. The museum was established in 1753 and owns 8 million items. It was hard to know how long I’d need to take it all in.

Here’s the exterior of the British Museum (not my pic):

And here’s the incredible Great Court, remodeled to look like this in 2000, which surrounds the British Museum reading room. It is the largest covered square in Europe at two acres. The roof is 1656 pairs of tessellated glass.

Here’s the Reading Room that sits in the core cylinder of the Great Court(pic not mine):

I am not sure which items to share with you from my brisk constitutional of the museum. My powers of observation are such that it might appear that I’m not paying attention at all or that I’m only choosing to look at the items that are placed near benches. The Rosetta Stone is there and a very large Egyptian collection. (Note: most of the 10 million Londoners were there with us in the Egyptian area). I’m a minimalist, I guess – I need a small world to choose from and so, for my show-and-tell from the museum collection, I offer you this:

A 2500-year-old baby bottle/drinking cup from Italy:

And a 2000-year-old food strainer:

I am proud to say I lasted over 90 minutes in the British Museum, and just before we left, I saw the Rosetta Stone with my own eyes, but didn’t take any pictures because I wanted to go look for a snack. That reminds me of a artistic display I wanted to share with you from back in Tallinn, when Ron and I went to the Kumu art museum, which hopefully will help you feel better about my performance at the British Museum. I was struck by this installation of assorted snack food and cleaning items and found it to be the kind of art that speaks to me:

From the British Museum, we headed out and had a perfect London wandering day, with these highlights – Ron outside Westminster Abbey:

Me with Big Bus and Big Ben:

Here’s Trafalgar Square – dedicated in 1844 to celebrate the British defeat of Spain and France in the Napoleonic Wars. One pic below mine and one pic not mine. I’ll let you try to sort them out.

While we’re on the subject of camera skills, Ron and I had an interlude this morning where I asked Ron to take a picture of me as we walked by Chinatown. I handed him my phone and he took a few pictures. He handed the phone back to me and there was not a single photo. So I did a little phone pep talk – just put your thumb on this button and press – and gave him back the phone. Round Two – many attempts, but still no photos. Further pep talk and Round Three. No photos. Finally, on Ron’s fourth attempt to take a picture, he produced this, which he’s extremely proud of since it’s kind of artsy!