I’ve never really been to the British Museum except to go see its special exhibitions such as Michaelangelo Drawings and more recently The First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army. Mirela was pretty keen to go see some of the Greek artefacts so of we went this afternoon.

The collection of Greek artefacts is actually surprisingly vast and in fact, strangely enough 60% of the artefacts are in the British Museum and only 40% in Athens! I think there are 13 rooms in total dedicated to Ancient Greece and Rome. The room covering the Parthenon is one of the bigger rooms and quite interesting exhibits sculptures from those that used to decorate the outside of the building. It was disturbing to see all of these sculptures with their heads cut off but you could appreciate the skill that went into creating the amazing pieces. The move to bring the sculptures may have been controversial at the time (back in the 1800s) but I think in the end it was a good move as it probably resulted in the preservation of these historically significant items.

We also visited some of the other rooms dedicated to Asia and Africa but to be honest I think all up we were only in there for about an hour and a half! The museum was very busy which I guess at this time of year is to be expected but it wasn’t too crowded thankfully.

And our reward for this bit of culture. Chinese! Mirela has this thing for hoisin sauce at the moment … I don’t blame her – goes very well with duck pancakes. Yum!