A British Museum Outing with a HUGE Harry Potter Detour

Sidney came up with the title to this post, because I posted about a day in our Paris trip having a small Harry Potter detour two years ago. This day was quite the opposite. We spent a few hours at the British Museum in the morning.  We passed a street named Bury Place along the way.  Dan wanted a picture due to his line of work.

It is so huge that we were only able to see a small portion.  We are going to try to attempt to return on Friday night in order to see the Egyptian mummies section.  (It is open late on Friday evenings.)

It is a kid-friendly museum in that they have special tour pamphlets written for families to follow, based on the desired subject matter.  They will only give you one subject at a time, though, so we chose Ancient Greece due to Sidney and Lyndon's interest in that history (Thanks, Percy Jackson  books!).  On our path to Ancient Greece, we saw several amazing artifacts from other periods/places.   Here is the Rosetta Stone, the ancient stone that enabled archaeologists to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics.

We also encountered this statue of King Tut, created while he was alive (a portrait of sorts). 

Dan and I wanted to spend all day in the rooms with Assyrian ruins, because they dated back to around 650 to 750 BC.  The Assyrians/Babylonians fascinate both of us, due to their complete domination of the ancient world.  We had a photo bomber that I can't crop out on my laptop.  The place was quite crowded.  This picture doesn't do the sculptures justice.  They were pretty awe-inspiring. These guys guarded the entrance to an Assyrian palace of King Tiglath-Pileser III in Nimrud.  He reigned from 744-727 BC.  

Our Ancient Greece tour took us on a quest to find certain objects in the pamphlet.  One of the most impressive was this portion of a Nereid Monument for Arbinas of Xanthos, who died around 380 BC.  This is the reconstruction of the East side of the building.   

After our Ancient Greece mini-tour, it was Jack's turn.  He was excited to see the "giant snake" and "little guy guarding him" that were in the most recent Night at the Museum movie, which supposedly took place at the British Museum.  (Hadley isn't really interested in history, but she has to go along with the rest of us.)  We had asked at the information desk, and they had a pamphlet with the fact vs. fiction of the movie.  Alas, the "giant snake", which was a sculpture of an ancient Asian serpent deity, didn't really exist there, BUT the "little guy" did exist.  We attempted to follow the map to the exhibit space of ancient Asian artifacts and searched through a huge room to find Garuda, the real name of "little guy".  After many searches and asking several docents, we discovered that Garuda had flown away for a bit, unbeknownst to any of the staff we encountered.  Even the information desk staffers were surprised when I told them.  Their response was, "Surely not!  They would have told us if Garuda left the building."  They must be asked about him frequently.  We found the gap where he should be with a little placard that he is out on loan (see the empty spot on the upper shelf).  Maybe, he is filming another movie.  Needless to say, Jack was very disappointed.

We told the kids that it was time to go, because today was "surprise" day.  We have told them for several weeks now that we had a surprise for them in London.  They bugged us to find out what it was, but we managed to keep it a secret.  The surprise would have to wait until after lunch, though. We found a restaurant that Dan and I loved during our 1999 visit to London.  His sister was studying at the Wake Forest Worrell House in London, and she took us to a different location of Nando's.  It is a peri-peri roasted chicken restaurant. Peri-peri is an African spice that is delicious. As a bonus, they have fountain sodas with lots of ice, which is rare in Europe. 

Now, for the surprise!  We took a cab to a nearby train station.  After a 15 minute train ride outside of London, we finally broke the news to the kids, while waiting for a shuttle bus.  We were going to the film studios in which they filmed Harry Potter!!!!  You have to purchase tickets in advance.  I am glad we didn't tell them ahead of time, or they would have been fixated on it our entire trip.  The shuttle bus turned out to be a double-decker bus, so we were able to check off "riding on the top of a double-decker bus" from our list.  

I am only going to post two pictures from the tour on this post.  I will create a separate blog entry for the remaining 8000 pictures (just kidding, but only slightly -- I drained my camera battery part way through the tour and had to use my cell phone), so as to not bore anyone who isn't a Harry Potter fan. (Note:  I will post these pictures tonight, as we now have to get ready for our Buckingham Palace tour.) 

Here are the kids at the front entrance.

The tour was amazing!  The youngest three didn't quite get all of it.  Lyndon has only read through Book Three.  I have read Book One to Hadley and Jack.  I don't let them watch the movie until they have read the book.  The small parts they didn't understand will come to life when they finish the books and movies.  It was truly magical for all of us.  (Did you see my pun?) The tour took about 3.5 hours.  Yes, you read that correctly.  It was huge.  One of my favorite pictures was of all of us on the Hogwarts Express. Notice that a chocolate frog has just escaped out of the window.  

It was a fabulous day!