Another walk in the park

We took advantage of another beautiful London day by taking a leisurely stroll through Hyde Park. Here's a sample of the blue sky we enjoyed, making a nice background for this Achilles statue near Hyde Park Corner. It was erected to honor Wellington and was made from the melted down cannons of his enemies! They knew how to make victorious monuments back in the day, didn't they?

Part of our walk took us by the Princess Diana memorial fountain, on her memorial walk. There are certainly a lot of reminders of the "People's Princess" in this part of London.

Since the bus we took from the Park into central-central London deposited us in Trafalgar Square, we decided to spend a bit of time in the National Gallery (sorry, no photography permitted) before heading to our main target for the day, the British Museum. An hour wasn't nearly long enough for the Gallery but we did get to see some amazing paintings in this gorgeous setting. We focused on the Italian Renaissance and the Impressionists, ecletics that we are.

The British Museum was as fascinating for me as before. Three more hours and very little duplication from my first visit. This time I concentrated on the Greek and Roman exhibits, which must be the most numerous of the Museum's categories. We ended up with the Elgin Marbles, which are spectacular, but I was just as charmed and intrigued by all the smaller items I saw, too. Fortunately photography is permitted here and I took a lot of pictures. Here's just one that I thought was pretty cool. A drinking cup (was it Etruscan? I think so but it could have been from any of another number of cultures—I just decided to take pictures of things that I liked and not worry about where they came from. If I had to stop and make notes each time, I'd only have gotten to see half as many things!)