A visit to the British Museum

Not the British Museum, but this is the view from the bus window as we are crossing Waterloo Bridge - St Paul's Cathedral

the Shard in the background, behind a rather less attractive building, 

and a variety of stuff in City, like the Gherkin and some I don't know the name of.

An old friend of the family was in town briefly, between various scientific meetings (and when I say old, I mean, I've known her since she was born and I was a mere child of just-old-enough-to-babysit-her myself) so we met up at the British Museum to have a wander and look at some of the treasures. 

We actually did my favourite thing to do with museums - the Wander and Stop, where you just wander and then (surprise, surprise) stop when you see something which catches your eye.  With large museums like the British Museum, it's not possible to see it all, and though I did make sure to take her past the Rosetta Stone, we didn't bother with lots of the high profile stuff (for instance, the Sutton Hoo room was, as usual, packed with tourists), we just wandered until we saw something we liked the look of, then stopped. 

So, here are some of those things. Mostly small things. 

We ended up looking at the netsuke collection on the 5th floor (who knew there was a fifth floor  - it's only a few rooms open to the public). We had seen one on a touch table in the Asia gallery, and as Geoff has just finished reading The Hare with the Amber Eyes, netsuke were on my mind anyway.  So we went off in search of more (well, the nice lady on the touch table told us where they were). Apparently the British Museum has over 3000 in their collection, but there were only a few cabinets on display.  Here are some favourites...

If you aren't familiar with these little Japanese carvings, bear in mind that these are only a few inches high!