Leaving London

It's a distinct place. This city is a masterpiece, truth be told. It's appeal stretches wide, and though I only saw a tiny fraction of what makes London London, I feel like I love this city. After spending two months living in Spain, the fact that they speak English is enough for me to come away feeling good about it. But, beyond that, there is so much life welling in from all sides. This city is active and alive, incorporating cultural influence from all over the world. It's quite a remarkable convenience, all of the uncontrolled culture emanating from its pores. I leave it today, as I'm sitting on an express train that should get me to the airport to fly back to Madrid to board a bus to ride to the station in Salamanca to walk back to my room across town. Traveling is not as much fun as arriving. Arriving is the gift.
Yesterday, I met up with Jon and Marta Wilcox, my wonderful friends that live in London and we hurried to the British Museum, where we spent a couple of hours wandering around. The British Empire stole a lot of amazing artifacts, a crime whose result spell an impressively full history museum. The highlight for me was of course seeing the Rosetta Stone, one of the post important linguistic artifacts in world history. Marta had a google doc that led us to all of the displays that contained artifacts with some bible significance. There, there are concrete pieces of history that directly correlate with Old and New Testament texts. It was amazing.
And that's the kind of thing I mean. London is this cultural centre of everything. Through the museums and the people walking on the street. I saw Van Gogh's Sunflowers, I saw original Rembrandt and Monet, I saw an actual battle standard of the Muslim sheik on whom the Sunni/Shi'a split was based upon. It was impressive. This city is impressive. Now, I take leave and return to non-tourist status. I look forward to coming back someday, fully expectant that it shall not be long.