A Night At The Museum. Well, Actually A Day. At Several Museums.

We headed off to South Kensington, on our very first experience of the London Underground. 

The London Underground. We successfully navigated our way from North Greenwich to South Kensington, despite closures on the District and Circle lines preventing us from taking the optimum route. Oh yeah, we did.

Stupidly, we failed to observe that it was a) raining, b) a Saturday, and c) museums are places that families like to go, so everywhere we went was completely filled with breeders and their progeny. A beginner's mistake.   

Desperate for coffee and extremely hungry after the marathon effort of navigating the tube and dodging all of the screaming tiny humans, we decided our first port of call had to be a cafe. The one we ended up in could reasonably be described as a greasy spoon, but made surprisingly good chips for 10 o'clock in the morning. We enjoyed a full english breakfast and, fortified and restored, we headed to our first museum of the day. Which obviously had to be The Science Museum. 

We got a little lost trying to find the exhibit we were interested in.

"Waaaah I am trapped in the museum staircase and will never be able to learn about the History of Medicine!"

The Science Museum had some really cool exhibits of stuff from the Wellcome Collection, including one about the history of medical technology and another one about the science and art of medicine. Ally was in her element. Brybry also got very excited about the display of Pasteur's swan-necked flasks, and took many a picture to use in her tutorials next year.

Ally keenly examining an old school MRI machine. And the images in the background, to try and deduce what the pathology is. 

In addition to this photo, and many others like it, Bry also took zoomed in photos of all the information bits to use as question resources next year. Yes. Science is a way of life.

How cute is this old ECG machine???

A biting commentary of the commercialisation of the healthcare industry.  Looks like candy. 

After soaking in the glories and wisdom of the science museum, we sought a vastly different museum experience. Just kidding, we went to The Natural History Museum. We really love science.

The main building is so beautiful. And has a dinosaur.

So beautiful.

We think Darwin approves.

Yup, he definitely does.

Ally heard rumour of a film screening in The David Attenborough Centre that was soon to start (and it was amazing, a retrospective of his career doing nature documentaries) so ran off to check it out. Bryony got separated on the way, and thus we spent the longest part of trip apart thus far. Ally then headed up to the Darwin Centre (which is in a big cocoon-shaped concrete thing in the middle of the building that goes up several floors) to look at some insects and some evolutiony stuff, then some mammals and dinosaurs; Bry checked out the mammals, reptiles, and various fossilised crustaceans and fishes, and basically had a huge zoology nerdfest. 

Casually the first known fossil in the evolution of birds - the archaeopteryx. 

Ice rink and pretty lights outside The Natural History Museum.

It's so dark in all these photos because it's England in winter,  but also because we got kicked out at closing time. 

Bryony, sad at having to leave the museum so they could close it. We could have easily also spent A Night At The Museum. 

The next day we went to Cambridge and it was pretty (oh goodie, a new place!)