Day 9 - Wednesday, July 17th

After a solid night’s sleep, Abi is out early to retrieve groceries and prepare breakfast, and we enjoy a sunny morning in the condo.  At 11:00AM, we leave for our first stop, the British Museum.  Where previously the line had stretched around the block, on this day we sail through in five minutes.  We go directly to the “Flood Fragment” of the Gilgamesh tablets and then weave our way through probably the most astonishing collection of stolen artifacts anywhere in the world.  The sheer audacity of the British Empire’s sense of entitlement in the 19th Century is itself a thing to behold just as a supposed thorn from Christ’s crown preserved in a golden reliquary is as well.

We then ventured down to Cecil Court and its curious collection of small antique and book shops before dining at a traditional British pub and heading to our 7:00PM performance of “Stranger Things” at the Phoenix Theatre in the West End.  The show was a bedazzling spectacle of theatrical wizardry that more than made up for its sagging storyline with flash pots, loud bangs, and sheer technical bravura.  My jackknifed knees could no longer take the tightly packed theatre rows in the Grand Circle which had been designed by three highly prominent motherless bastards back in 1930, so I spent the second half happily standing in the SRO section in the far upper reach of the venue.  A fun night of theater.  Arriving back at our condo at 11:00PM, we all flopped exhausted into our beds.