Our last full day in London had the worst weather, so no pictures, or I would have killed my camera.
We started the day at the British Museum, which was having a special exhibit on Pompeii and Herculaneum. It was a fascinating exhibit. The early part was arranged as if it were a Roman house, and contained articles from each of the types of rooms that were found in most houses, to illustrate daily Roman life. Due to the particular way Herculaneum was destroyed (a pyroclastic flow basically vaporized them, where Pompeii was buried), many of the non-living organic objects like food and furniture were carbonized, so there were loaves of bread where you could still see the maker’s mark, and a well preserved cradle (which still held its owner when it was discovered).
At the end, they talked about the day of the eruption. I had seen pictures of the casts that were made of voids found in Pompeii that turned out to be people, but seeing them in person is a whole different experience. The overall exhibit opened with a cast of a guard dog. At the end were casts of a family that all died together, hiding under a staircase. It was incredibly moving to see those people.
We wandered through the medieval section of the museum to kill a little time before meeting up with K again, and then wandered along the south bank of the Thames, as far as the Tower bridge. It looks very different down there from the last time I was there, nearly ten years ago. Dinner at Wagamama finished up our last full day in London.