London (Olympic Day 10)

We have late afternoon tickets at Men's water polo today so we have some time to do something else in the morning. I would still like to get a SIM card for my cell phone so that I can use it as a smart phone without having to sell Sean into slavery. So, we decide to head toward the British museum near Tottingham Road and then head over to Oxford Street to look for a SIM card.

Back to London Bridge station on our way to a change to the Northern Line at Waterloo. We get off and a guy wearing a Puerto Rico jacket approaches us and asks if I would like to trade. It turns out that he is involved with tourism in Puerto Rico and trades a small pin shaped like the Coqui frogs that inhabit the island for a water polo pin as that was the sport that he used to pay. He gives us his email address in case we'd like a tour of Puerto Rico.

We switch trains and are soon on Tottingham Road. There are a lot of electronic shops around, but none are obviously selling SIM cards so we head for the British museum. We walk around a corner and run into a pair of people from Hungary who want to trade pins. He trades a pin that looks like it is a special pin for people who donate money to the Hungarian team and asks for a NBC soccer pin. So far, I've taken whatever pin the other person has offered, but eventually I'd like to be able to choose my pin. 

The British museum is to England as the Smithsonian is to America and it is huge. We could spend several days here, but only have a few hours so we spend some time at the beginning looking at maps to choose a few areas we'd like to concentrate on. We decide on China, Egyptian mummies and statues, Americas and Roman Britain.

Just inside the Egyptian section is one of the most famous items in the museum: the Rosetta stone that allowed egyptologists to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics. Sorry that there is no picture, but I really had a difficult time getting pictures of items in glass boxes. While looking at the stone, I was approached by a pair of women who wanted to trade pins. The first woman offered a Mexican flag pin. I completed that trade and could see that the second woman was disappointed because she had the same flag pins. I told her that there was no problem and handed her a pin from my give-away pocket. It is great that there are some people who want to trade pins, but it is too bad that none of them are from England.

While I was standing there, I heard a tour guide behind me. He was telling his tour that you have to view this museum in the context of England in the 1800's. It was in a contest with France to be the dominant world power. The two countries competed in everything and collecting antiquities was no exception. You can almost picture the ships of the East India company loaded to the gunwales with bootie from the civilizations that they visited. Looking around at all of the statues, I'm surprised that the Egyptians have not tried to get more of these back.

The mummies were equally impressive. I had seen a number of these before, but there were a number of mummies where they had many of the various layers between the mummy and the outside coffin. Here is one of the outer coffins:

Next up was China. They had a special exhibit on the history of Jade. It was impressive to see how long (more than 5,000 years), the Chinese people have been producing art. But I liked the section on ceramics better. Here is one of my favorite pieces:

It was time for lunch so we went to the museum dining room - and had a great meal. Sean had chorizo and black pudding (sausages made with blood - how many 14 year olds would even try this?), I had Scottish salmon and Beth had some sort of Spinach tart (looked like a quiche to me).

Feeling much better, we head off to the section on Roman Britain. One of the things that I learned was that Roman influence extended much further north than Hadrian's wall (read about Hadrian's wall in a future post). They had a number of forts in central Scotland. I also found that they were in Britain for quite a long time; perhaps 150-200 years. Here is a picture of a Roman tile that was donated by the Bank of Britain when it was discovered during construction of the bank in 1806!:

Our last stop was the section on the Americas. We were quite curious to see what would be there. I turned out that is was exclusively dedicated to the indigenous people. There were sections on the Inuit people in the north to the Incas in the south. Here is an Aztec panel that I liked:

We'd like to see more, but we'll miss the water polo matches if we don't get going. On our way out, we see an exhibit on the making of the Olympic medals. Here is what they look like:

We make a quick stop at the hotel to change cameras and then head off to the Olympic park. We were a little worried about how the Underground would be on a work day (our previous trip was on Saturday), but this trip was even faster. We were through Olympic park security (with the ceremonial donation of pins to the security people) in about 45 minutes. Transportation at this Olympics has certainly been very strong.

We aren't sure what there will be for dinner inside the water polo venue so we stop at an area called World Square that is just to the left of the Olympic Superstore. Beth and I have Thai chicken with green curry and Sean has Chinese vegetarian noodles. Finding a place to eat was a challenge as all of the nearby tables are occupied. After walking around for a few minutes, we walk over to the edge of the walkway near the Olympic stadium and sit on the ground to eat. Both dishes were tasty, but a little on the bland side for our taste.

The Water polo venue is close by, but we enter the venue fairly early to have a look around. In this venue, the small store and food booths are outside. Our seats are in the 3rd row right on one goal line. Ordinarily, these would be great seats for photography, but in this case, the shot clock is in a direct line between our seats and the goal. I've got a 300mm zoom lens so I'll concentrate on the far end of the pool. All around us are current and former water polo athletes. Next to me is a guy who plays water polo at UCLA and in front of me is a guy who is on the Australian team.

The first match is between Britain and Montenegro. This is another sport where Britain would not have qualified had they not been the Olympic host nation. On the other hand, the team from Montenegro have a chance to make the knockout round. Going in, they have lost to the USA, beaten a strong Hungarian team, tied Serbia and beaten Romania. They need a win to advance.

It is clear from the beginning that there will be no miracle win for Team GB. In fact, they look more like a bunch of swimmers who occasionally play water polo as they have some difficulty getting way out of the water to shoot, trouble getting open and their passes are not as crisp as the team from Montenegro. On the other hand, the British goalkeeper looks quite good:

Despite his best efforts, Montenegro pulls away to win 13-4. At the end, the British team tosses their caps into the stands to thank the fans for all of their support:

The second match is between Spain and Italy. These are much better teams than we saw in the first match. Spain has already qualified for the knock-out round while Italy needs to win in order to advance. This is clear as Italy gets off to a fast 4-0 start. Rather than concentrating on the match, I'm watching the battle between two athletes who play the 2-meter position. This is the most dangerous position because if you can get the ball into the 2-meter guy, the chance of scoring is very high. This is also the most important position for the defense. As a result, there is a lot of warfare going on here. The defender will often raise both arms to show the referee that he is not doing anything while at the same time holding the other guy under the water with his legs. Here are some pictures of this action:

The Spanish wake up and close the gap to 7-6, but can't get any closer and Italy prevails 10-7 to clinch a spot in the quarterfinals.

One word about the TV coverage on BBC. In some ways, it is even more geared toward British medals than NBC is toward American medals. It is common for the announcers to openly root for the British athletes on air and every day, they show a graphic of Big Ben as the height equivalent to the number of medals that the British team won in Beijing and another tower equal to the number of medals won so far in London. The two towers are almost equal in height now as Team GB is raking in a bunch of medals in track cycling. On the other hand, I have learned much more about the technique required to perform some of these events than I have ever learned from watching American TV. For example, today they are talking about the technique of running high hurdles. They mention that it takes a man approximately 0.3 seconds to clear a hurdle and 0.7 seconds to run between hurdles so you have to have a very precise sense of timing in order to be any good at the hurdles. I've really enjoyed these bits and look forward to more of them.

Steps for the day: 18770 (our highest total so far)