British Museum & British Library - Lots to see!

With only one day left in London for Sheryle and Vicki, we had to made some choices about how to spend our time, and the British Museum and British Library won out.

The British Museum never fails to astound me - what a collection!  

The only way to avoid being utterly overwhelmed is to just pick a room - only one - and leave the rest for another day, which is what we each did.  I chose the "Enlightenment" room (17th and 18th centuries), which was particularly interesting, because this was the time period during which the museum was founded, so it included both artifacts from the time period and information about the initial collections that formed the beginning of the museum as it now exists.  

After exploring our respective rooms, we met for tea.

And as we were about to leave, we discovered the Anglo-Saxon and Viking exhibit that's still being arranged, but was very interesting, nonetheless.  

We walked back to the hotel through some of the University of London and Gordon Square in the heart of Bloomsbury.  After dropping off our museum gift shop purchases, we then headed over to the nearby British Library, where we had lunch in their restaurant.  

Vicki and I explored the "best of" exhibit room - 

followed by the special "Propaganda" exhibit, which just opened a couple of days ago.

The "new" British Library building has been open for about 15 years now, and I've always considered it London's best kept secret - it has never been crowded like the British Museum can be.  Today was an exception - mostly because there were several school groups visiting - must be field trip season.  It wasn't packed, but it was certainly busier than usual.

It's still an essential stop whenever I'm in London.

Since Sheryle and Vicki need to leave early tomorrow morning, they will need to spend this evening getting packed.  Looks like a return visit is in the future - there's so much more to see!