There is a particular pleasure to be derived from having shared speculations become plans and then realities.  So our trip was already a success when HL and I met Miri at Heathrow as Summer yielded to Autumn.  Miri and I had not been together in London for decades.  As we intended to proceed to Paris for the following week, she and I were revising our own Tale of Two Cities for the 21st Century.

       Our hotel was in Bloomsbury, close to Russell Square.  Though neither HL nor I had slept much during our flight, our proximity to the British Museum enabled us to ignore our fatigue.  There was no charge for admission, so it was worthwhile to go for only a few hours.  We walked to a side entrance where there was no queue, and entered the repository of the many treasures that the British had looted tirelessly in pursuit of its imperial policies.

The red double-decker buses were still the most recognizable components of London traffic.
 

           The Rosetta Stone may be the most famous artifact in the museum.  It was surrounded by rows of visitors even late on a Tuesday afternoon.  Though it provided an invaluable key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics, no one believes that the museum will give the Stone back to Egypt.

The Assyrian sculptures from the ancient royal palace at Nimrud also were part of the permanent collection. 
 

          The friezes and statuary taken from The Parthenon in Athens filled some of the largest and most glorious galleries in the museum.  In the 18th Century, Lord Elgin appropriated the signature pieces crudely and shamelessly.  The government of Greece has been trying in vain to have its Classical patrimony returned ever since that egregious theft. 
 

These headless figures were just a few of the dozens that graced The Parthenon's pediments.