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London Culture Vultures

In an effort to try and stay away from my usual haunts & looking for a little inspiration I asked Twitter for their favourite Central London breakfast bases.

You see I had arranged a little morning of museum snooping with Tania (of JFJ) and we wanted full tummies before we filled our minds.

The suggestions poured in, but it was Polly Bagley‘s who’s shone out. She mentioned that Riding House Cafe serve breakfast smoothies in milk bottles and we were sold!

At 9am sharp we sat down & I got my paws on a PBJ smoothie, in a milk bottle.

It’s peanut butter, strawberries, banana & apple juice. Something I fully intend to recreate at home.

T was mildly disappointed that her juice cocktail arrived in a glass, but soon got over it when I said she could share mine!

Breakfast was a pretty hearty full english for me.

And some fairly lacklustre scrambled eggs with smoked salmon for Tania.

It was never going to win any beauty (or taste) pageants so we decided perhaps it didn’t warrant a picture.

The restaurant itself however, is pretty gorgeous.

Having been graced with the un-beatable presence of London’s Autumn sunshine we decided to stroll to the British Museum & save our taxi money for the next inevitable downpour.

We didn’t regret it! There’s just nowhere better when the sun shines…

ASOS skater mac // Topshop skirt/shorts (skorts?) // Uniqulo merino jumper

Snuggly tights // Prada tote

The British Museum was the first national public museum in the world. It gave free admission and invited in ‘studious and curious persons’ from all over the world.

The whole place is sort of a huge old building with a surprise courtyard in the middle. The quadrangle you see from the outside was designed by Sir Robert Smirke and completed in 1852.

It’s glorious and imposing and looks just like The British Museum should… but The Great Court is the bit that really steals my heart.

Smirke had originally intended the space to be a garden, but it never happened. In 1857 the reading room was built in the middle as much needed book storage so they gave up on the garden.

In 1997 the museum’s vast collection of books was (rather sensibly and I’m not sure why they didn’t do it sooner) moved to The British Library.

Lord Foster won a nationwide architectural competition to redesign the space & it opened in 2000.

If you ask me, he did a pretty cracking job.

Check this out…

The Museum is bursting at the seams with artefacts (2 million of them) and stories from all over the world.

Not only is it an interesting, beautiful, enriching place to go… but it’s also pretty humbling.

It allows you to really gain a perspective on life & time in the scheme of things.

Humans have been walking the earth for such a mind blowingly long time and it’s easy to forget that and get sucked up into little dramas and problems you come across along the way.

This is a preserved skeleton and coffin from 3000 BC

Three THOUSAND years before Christ, people were fashioning coffins and mourning their loved ones.

They had their own problems and ups & downs. Maybe it’s time we stopped stressing so much over ours and just enjoy the ride.

Being quietly silly in museums is always a good start…

This is a limestone board game & marbles from 2890 BC

Next time you groan when granddad brings out the board games at Christmas, just think about how long people have congregated to play these things and how much they would have meant to ancient civilisations.

There are beautiful works of art from all over the world.

I do find it a little sad that they’re not in the country they came from, but it is an amazing place to wander. One second you’re in Ancient Egypt with Pharaohs and the next you’re in Ancient Greece with Gods.

There’s even an entire room filled with old and incredibly intricate clocks.

We stopped to watch this one chime.

Tiny silver men came out and chased each other while others clanged the little bells with mallets.

Magical, but my favourite bit is still the court.

Having saturated ourselves with history, we headed off to tea with a quick stop at the gift shop along the way.

I fell a little in love with these hand beaded wax skulls.

And put one firmly on my Christmas list. There are some other pretty bad ass ones here, if you’re smitten too.

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