The Week in Review

Well, the week in London is about over. All that's left is the trip to the Kings Cross area for Ethiopian Food. L and H and I pretty regularly seek out Ethiopian food on our various travels. We've had it in Chicago, New York, Dallas, for sure and I think Vancouver.

The food has been a real highlight of the trip. Even though I'm not used to eating so much at night anymore. We've had Lebanese, Thai, African/Morrocan, Indian, the nights preceding. All of it has really been pretty stellar. A few years back, we had a foods of the world dinner group. We'd pick a culture and everyone would bring an appropriate dish. So we just pretty much did a year's worth of dinner group in a week.

Here is a backwards accounting of the order of events. Friday This morning, we went to the British Library. The British Library may not sound all that exciting, but it really is. They have the oldest extant copy of the New Testament. Two Copies of the Magna Carta, all sorts of other Biblical Material and sacred texts from many other religious traditions, Shakespeare's First Folio, Letters from Jane Austen, Pinter's plays, and original Beatles lyrics. They have lots more than this.. but just to give you a sense of the range of things....

after that we rode a bus (yes, I got to go on the top of the double-decker. me and the BIC ers. we were having fun) over to the British Museum. Lunch in the Cafe, and well, how to blog about the British Museum... Rosetta Stone, Elgin Marbles, Famous Dancing Shiva... all the Assyrian and Egyptian 'stuff', it is really just an overwhelming conglomeration of the highest artistic expressions of human cultures. I still have the most personal resonance with the Greek sections of the Museum, but having read Gilgamesh several years now and now being a yogini, there were new associations that when I last visited.

Another highlight from this morning, going to Platform 9 3/4 at the Charring Cross Station.

Thursday. Henry led us through the Tate Modern, which I think now is my favorite museum. MOMA used to be... Jessy Jordan, a grad student of mine at Baylor, came down from Cambridge and spent the day with the group and it was good to catch up with him. After the Tate Modern, we had lunch at a pub near St. Paul's, walked through the Law Court area of London and went to the Temple Church (Davinci Code, Foucault's Pendelum) and went to the Soane House. Then the group dispersed and L and H and I walked around shopped, ate Indian food at Masala Spice, (they had Thali for the first time) and we saw a really great play, God of Carnage, with Ralph Fiennes.

Wednesday started off with Westminister Abbey which was really uncrowded. We then walked over to Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guard, saw part of the parade entrance in, but it was too crowded for me to see much, so I just headed off early to go over to the Intermediate Class at the Iyengar Institute.

Also a great experience. It is nice to be part of the Iyengar Club. Forward Bending week. Learned some new details about AMS and Krounchasana.

Looking forward to going home.