Thursday: an eclectic day, combining visits to the Vagina Museum (yes really), the Mithraeum (the ruin of a Roman temple), and the Silver Vaults.

The first stop involved taking a long Tube ride to Whitechapel, in the heart of old working class East London. There are now large, relatively recent immigrant communities here and it’s immediately striking how many women are wearing hijabs or niqabs compared to other areas of the city. The street markets are also full of delicious fruits and vegetables that we couldn’t identify. Definitely still a relatively poor area but with hints of “bougie-fication” – cafes, hipster clothes shops etc. Down a grotty looking alley under a railway line –

there’s a row of businesses built in under the railway arches, including –

We always try to visit unusual museums and this definitely fit the bill. Its origin is especially amusing for us – see text below –

because we only discovered it after discovering that in Iceland a month from now we’ll be staying near, yes, the Penis Museum that started it all.

The museum is smaller and less robust than we’d expected (it is relatively new, just a few hundred square feet, and relies upon crowdsourced funding), but occupies a place between activism and art. The name itself is activism– as they point out, nearly half of all parents only use euphemisms when talking to their daughters about their genetalia.

Features include an exhibit on menopause and one about how different cultures talk (or don’t) about women’s health. My favorite image was a reproduction of a woodcut illustrating a 17th century poem about a woman ridding their island of a demon by showing him the “wound” her oh so strong and threatening husband could inflict upon the demon. Struck with horror, the demon flees, never to return.

From the activism side, there was a copy of a modern tampon book from Germany. These “books,”  containing 15 tampons, were published to reduce the tax burden of buying period products: until recently, menstrual products were taxed at 19% while books were taxed at 7%.

From here we refueled at an exceedingly hipster sandwich shop (Rogue Sarnies would be completely at home in Portland) and then walked several miles down to the Mithraeum. I (K) really need a bright orange t-shirt that says “tourist” in large letters–I was so busy looking around that I was a complete menace to car and bike traffic.

The Mithraeum, a Roman temple to Mithras, was uncovered during construction of Bloomberg’s headquarter building. It apparently sat uncovered in the car park for years, until they decided to move it into the basement of the building for conservation. Now, partially reconstructed and housed in a darkened room, you partake of the temple “experience” through the judicious use of light shined through haze to create the impression of ghostly walls.

Upstairs there is a wall covered in artifacts uncovered during the construction of the building. It is remarkable to see a nearly perfect shoe worn by a Roman soldier in the first century AD.

Outside the building we admired the art installation evoking the Walbrook River which ran through London during Roman times.

We walked on, through increasing rain, past the Duke of Wellington outside the Bank of England –

to the Silver Vaults. Originally built in the 1880s as a non-bank safe depository for rich people’s prized possessions, it morphed over time into a secure space for silver dealers, especially during WWII as space potentially protected from bombing.

Now it is an Aladin’s cave of all things gloriously silver, from spoons, to tea sets, to menorahs, to elaborate sailing ships. One favorite: special tongs for eating asparagus one spear at a time.

Back out to discover the rain really coming down and decided we should take the bus home rather than the tube so we could appreciate the city views. It was a nice idea that failed – an hour at near walking pace in a not-warm sauna.