Europe CNY 2012 - Day 17 - Departure

Europe CNY 2012
Day 17 - 4th February - Departure


Various varieties of bread for breakfast


"Rich and creamy milk from Jersey Cows. Unhomogenised. Sainsbury's. Taste the difference"
It was great, though still not as nice as the one in Spain


"Où est la bint gâtée et ingrate ? Je ne la vois point."
I assume this referred to the bitchy cat (which you probably can't find in any photo because she was always hiding in a cupboard)


Boris


Boris and Harry


"Open early"
Pret a manger was open the earliest of all the outlets in the airport. It was that popular, huh.


"Please offer your seat to those less able to stand"
This was easier than listing all the groups which should get a seat, but maybe it was too subtle. Actually I saw similar signs all around England.

EasyJet had a contest - take pictures of the EasyJet bear in destinations they serviced and win a free flight. This was smart - they would earn money from bear sales.


I either took this because it was cheap or to benchmark with duty free prices in Singapore


"£10.00 each or 2 for £10.00"
Why would anyone get only one?


Public display of the KPIs of each terminal. Well done.


Kate also comes without William. Feel free to analyse the significance of this.

Post-checkin airport shopping is a better bargain in Heathrow than Singapore because VAT is higher. For example the £39.99 Clark's I had bought in Stansted while waiting for my bus were only £33/32 here.


Harrods 6ft Beefeater Bear. £1,652.15


Pret's All Day Breakfast (and indeed everything else) cost more if you dined in - because of VAT. Erm. Okay.
So I had this and sparkling grape juice and elderflower.


They know how to con people with talk of Air Miles - but then I think some people might find the idea of fruit and vegetables grown in a greenhouse appealing.
In any event the sandwich was actually quite good.


I think I took this for being a staircase to a closed door. It seemed a lot more noteworthy at the time.


Ham, Cheese and Tomato "Croissant" from Pret. Because Lufthansa food sucked. Despite not looking like a croissant it was quite good.


I can't remember why I took this HSBC ad


Ad on Lufthansa serviette for my butterbrezel. How unprofessional for a full service airline. In fact Lufthansa's name is not even on it.


This outlet at Frankfurt took the cake for most cutthroat prices ever: €3,60 for 500ml of Coke. But then it was right beside the cake.


Instant noodles (aka "Asia noodle soup") - what passes for a gourmet meal in Germany (or Frankfurt Airport, at least)


Weird location indicator Lufthansa used when the plane was on the runway at the airport


Weird CGI for location indicator Lufthansa used when the plane was in the air


There was no choice of food on Lufthansa, so I was treated to an exceptionally bad beef stroganoff. This was the worst plane food I could remember having. As the saying goes, if the cooks are from Germany, you are in hell.

I tried to observe Lufthansa's level of service, and it wasn't very good. Even though my study was not as extensive as it could've been, I didn't notice any staff coming down the aisle in response to my request for attention.

In fact some requests for attention went unanswered (they could've been preparing for breakfast, but still). They didn't walk down the aisles unless at the designated times (e.g. to serve meals). Indeed one attendant walked down the aisle to deliver a special breakfast - and ignored the light signalling that I desired attention. Grr. During my Lufthansa flight, I discovered what happens if the light asking for attention is left on for too long - it turns off by itself.

The one time I thought they were finally coming to attend to me, the attendant just asked me to put my seat upright (and didn't ask me what I needed).


Breakfast


Megastructures: Singapore (Marina Bay Sands)
Also if you notice, the monitor was widescreen, so actually movie watching was alright (I suspect it wasn't true widescreen, since the Megastructures episode I watched still had black bars at the top and bottom).

The entertainment system jumbled CD tracks. Gah.


"Arriving passengers from Malaysia can buy duty paid wines. All bona fide travellers of 18 years old & above are eligible"
Who are the non-bona fide travellers? Illegal immigrants?


Lots of shortbread!

Europe CNY 2012 - Day 16 - British Museum

"There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes." - Doctor Who

***

Europe CNY 2012
Day 16 - 3rd February - British Museum

Half the toilets at the hostel were clogged or spoilt. Gah.

Since I was crippled, I wasn't able to go very far. Luckily my hostel was just beside the British Museum, so I managed to go for the Hajj exhibition as well as see how my favourite museum had changed in the 6 years since I'd visited it (and to check in on some favourites).

For breakfast, I went to a cafe called "Roma Bella". The breakfast menu consisted of:


1. Full Scottish English Breakfast
2. Full Vegie Breakfast (vegan-unfriendly)
3. Egg Benedict (sic)
4. Scrambled Eggs
5. Eggs Florentine
6. Eggs Royale

As you can probably tell from the name, it was an Italian joint. But then Colazione is not very exciting.

They also had jacket potatoes, fish & chips and sandwiches. Which seemed to be standard in English places.


Full Vegie English Breakfast
The hostel breakfast would've been vegetarian. I needed breakfast anyway because I was feeling terrible and I needed something to have my pills with.
It was quite mediocre but then it was just across from the British Museum. Maybe the Italian food was better.

It's easy to be vegetarian in the UK. Vegans... don't have it so good. Vegetarian options usually have egg or dairy elements.


"Open with care, sprinkle with abandon" (Splenda)


British Museum


Leave your large bags and luggage at home. This is like flying, but worse.


Girl making a home video. This is quite a good zipai tool (to film oneself) - a rod at the end of which one can put one's video camera.


War Memorial


I assumed the ladies in black were all going to the Hajj exhibition


For fans of "A history of the world in 100 objects" - not all are on display


"and let thy feet
millenniums hence
be set in midst of knowledge"
- Tennyson

All the Latin purists can go excoriate Tennyson.

While waiting for the Hajj exhibition I hobbled around the ground floor. It was always nice to see the various items again.


Rosetta Stone



Every time I see the Rosetta Stone, it is different. The first time it was on a plinth, then a glass case came up around it. Now they'd moved it so it was the first thing you saw on entering the gallery.


Lely's Venus


Nereid Monument


On the Parthenon Sculptures (aka Elgin Marbles, a term they strenously refrained from). They even have FAQ pamphlets about the Greek government's campaign to have the marbles returned. I wasn't able to see if there was a similar rack of FAQ pamphlets at the Lewis Chessmen about demands that they be returned to Scotland.

Having been to the Parthenon's Museum, it was obvious to me that the state of preservation and the mode of presentation of the sculptures in the British Museum far surpassed that of those in Athens (at least as of 2006).


Hermes, Dionysius (probably), Demeter and Ares


Horse head


Centaur trampling a falling lapith


Seated woman on the point of rising, woman reclining in companion's lap


Horsemen


Three Nereids


Sargon II


Grooms and Horses


Palace of Sargon

Flash is alright in the British Museum as a whole, which is rare. I suppose it's because they have few light-sensitive objects - only stuff with colours can be damaged by light.

The room dedicated to the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos was closed, presumably because of a lack of manpower. This was very annoying as it was a very important room.


Sacred Boat of Queen Mutemwia


"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Ramesses II


Panehsy


Blind people get to touch some items!


Chinese Zodiac merchandise. Approximately 1/12 of the people will get their zodiac sign wrong, since for simplicity they have aligned the solar and lunar calendars.


"Manga at the British Museum"


Alabaster Stela of the Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II


Hajj Exhibition Halal Specials
Presumably they aren't halal normally (do Muslims come normally? this can be another indicator of integration)


Stone Guardian figure
Apparently there are "Korean features", but they don't specify what these might be

I then got to enter the timed Hajj exhibition.

There was a 1582 compass for finding Mecca. Constantinople was marked in red. Interestingly, this points to an inconvenient fact Turkish nationalists will omit: even the Turks have called Istanbul Constantinople for most of their occupation of the city.

"Istanbul is one of the many names of the city. The word Istanbul is derived from the colloquial Greek eis tin polin, "to the city" Originally, the name Istanbul referred only to the walled city and excluded all suburbs... To describe the whole city, the Ottomans continued using the Byzantine name Constantinople (Kostantiniyye)... With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Republic of TURKEY, all previous names were abandoned and Istanbul came to designate the entire city. Today the use of the name Constantinope to describe the Ottoman capital, although historically accurate, is often deemed politically incorrect by Turkish historians and by most Turks" --- Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire / Gábor Ágoston and Bruce Alan Masters

Muslims believe that the Kaaba building was originally built by Adam and rebuilt by Abraham and Ishmael. Yet, access to it is denied to other Peoples of the Book. What if Israel banned non-Jews from Jerusalem?

Mecca is called the City of Abraham.

The Sultan used to send a Mahmal (palanquin) on pilgrimage to show how good he was.

Before they replaced the pillars for the Stoning of the Devil with a wall, how often did the pillars have to be changed?

Zam Zam is the well from which Muslim Holy Water comes from. This explains the name of the Arab Street restaurant.

The Tipu Sultan had his helmet (made of quilted cotton) dipped in Zamzam water so it was supposed to be impenetrable. However he was killed by the British in 1799. The helmet looked intact. I guess he wasn't wearing it.


Sainte Chapelle mechandise


Hoa Hakananai'a Easter Island Statue


Great chair idea - portable chairs for one to use. Everywhere should do this.

I then had lunch with M.


Hunter's Chicken, nachos


Note the Pub Favourite, Chicken Tikka Masala. "What would a traditional British pub be without the classic dishes that we all know and love?"


"You always know where you are in a licensed taxi"
Yeah. In debt.


Railway memorial for WWI and WWII. Apparently World War I lasted a few months longer here, until 1919.


Pierre Hermé macarons
Their body was not as scrumptiously delicate as Darcis. As for the filling, I preferred Darcis's milder intensity (it was less strong than La Durée though, which can come across as too strong).

I then returned to Cambridge for the night.


I like the man's dramatic look juxtaposed with the sign about drama


"Save our buses... If you want to stop the cuts to your bus then you should be here to lobby the cabinet members"
Higher taxes!


Four Seasons Duck


Boris