British Museum of Thefts

Well, yesterday I was a lazy bastard and decided to sleep in with no alarm clock! It has been a long, long time since I've done this (more than 2 weeks!!!), and I decided that it was time for some serious sleep and laying in bed reading and ordering room service (not something I can do from Candide).

But today was different! I needed to explore; to stretch my travel wings and see what awaited me in the city beyond the confines of the Marriott hotel.

First order of business was breakfast. Now, I don't normally eat breakfast; I prefer to wait until lunch. But, since I'm in England and all, I know that breakfast will be the only decent meal I'll have for the day. The English generally have horrible food, but their breakfast is to die for! It's absolutely loaded with fat, cholesterol, salt, carbohydrates, and possibly ground up infants. I don't know what's in the stuff, but it is awesome (see video below)!

After breakfast, I hailed a taxi to the British Museum. London taxis are the best. The entire vehicle is designed with the traveler in mind. In the U.S., taxis are just regular cars with a "taxi" light glued to the top. In London, the taxis have room in the back for both people and luggage. They're easy to enter and exit (even for big guys like me). The windows are large so you can watch the city unfold in front of you. So while England may not have invested too much effort into their culinary scene, they CERTAINLY know how to design a taxi!

The British Museum has been around since the mid-1700's, and has been free to visitors from its inception. The only issue I have with the museum is that most everything that it contains was stolen from some other civilization...from the Babylonians to the Egyptians to the Greeks to the Romans. Some of these civilizations (especially the Greeks) want their "stuff" back from the British. I mean, I've been to the Acropolis in Athens. Know what? The Parthenon is missing a few statues. Personally, I think that the Brits should give them back to Greece...after all, they were told that if they built a sufficient museum to house them, then the statues would be returned. I have personally seen the Greek museum built to hold the friggin' statues. The Brits say that this new museum isn't good enough!

Well, sirs, the friggin' Greeks carved the damn things in the first place! They should be able to store them in whatever sort of building they like. The fact is, the statues belong to the Greeks...in Greece! Give it back, you big bullies!!!

Don't tell anybody, but I managed to steal the Rosetta stone while nobody was looking. My intention is to return it to the people of Egypt when I visit there in a couple of weeks. We'll see what happens...

Damn Limeys!