Trafalgar Square, British Museum, St. Paul's Cathedral, a long nap

You can see the pictures from today here: http://picasaweb.google.com/dipak.chaudhari1/LondonDay220080610

I put captions this time, since looking at a series of a hundred pictures, taken over only one day, must be incredibly boring without knowing what you're actually seeing.
-----
This morning, I decided to walk over to the British Museum to meet up with Keone and Laura. I walked past Buckingham Palace, where people had gathered in a great throng to see the changing of the guard. I couldn't be bothered to wait 30 minutes to watch this though, so I decided to plan another day around this. I walked down "The Mall," the road with a reddish hue, half-jokingly referred to as the red-carpet for the royalty, that leads up from Trafalgar Sqaure, starting with quite an imposing stone gate, down, about 3/4 of a mile, to Buckingham Palace. Its quite a site to see trees lining the side of what is literally a red road lined with trees and Union Jacks leading up to the beautiful palace.

Trafalgar Square is nearly exactly what imagines when one thinks of what a proper British town square ought to look like. Imposing statues of General Nelson, some lions, and another military general, whose name escapes me now, that was responsible for managing the British appropriation of India as a colony. From the direction I entered, the National Gallery served a backdrop for a complicated intersection of no less than 6 roads, all of which were teeming with double decker buses and other quaint cars that I had formerly associated with the "Bourne" series. Keone, Laura, and I came back here after the British Museum but, unfortunately, my camera, by that point, had run out of battery and I don't have any of those pictures. Keone should have those though.

After being pointed in the wrong direction by a local in an attempt to then walk to the British Museum, and after also learning the hard way that the Briton is hard pressed to admit ignorance when it comes to travel directions, I eventually found my way over the course of an hour. Not having heard of the museum, apart from a less than glamorous mention in my "Europe on a Shoe String" guide, I walked in with low expectations of the objects in their collections only to encounter the Rosetta Stone (see pics) as the first of many remarkable artifacts in the audio "Top 50 Highlights Tour." If you've never experienced a museum with an audio tour, I highly recommend it as its quite another experience to passively listen to a commentator, especially if he/she speaks in a British accent which automatically commands
unwavering legitimacy, and being able to walk around and concurrently look at all the aspects of the object being narrated.

I then went over to St. Paul's Cathedral to meet up with Keone and Laura. Those two left the Museum before me as they'd gotten there a good deal earlier. We ate lunch on the steps and I saw the first, and what I hoped to be the last, of another guy wearing camo shorts, Keone's favorite bottom-wear. Unfortunately I saw another guy wearing even more intimidating looking camo shorts walking outside Riya's apartment. I didn't get a chance to go inside St. Paul's because the last tour was at 2, and I had stayed at the museum well beyond that.

We then made our way back to Trafalgar Square on the very front seats of the top deck of a Double Decker Bus. We bummed around there for about 30 to 45 minutes, taking photos in various compromising positions. At around 5:30 we left, and I walked back to the apartment. My nap, intended to last for 20 minutes, went for 2 hours instead. Walking around is tiring (my glass half full way of saying "I'm so out of shape that walking is tiring."). Been here writing emails, intermittently reading my current book ("Moral Minds" by Marc Hauser), meeting people who've come by to see Riya (I got to see Gayatri today), and just lounging around. I've realized that I have yet to be weaned from compulsively checking Gmail.

Was a good day, but I'm going to try and get more sight-seeing packed in tomorrow, seeing as how I'm leaving the day after.