Museums and musical theatre

Previously, I saw the Mary Rose and then spent a ton of time on trains... 

The day after I got back from Portsmouth, I decided that it was about time I took myself to the British Museum. So I took the Tube to Holborn and then promptly got lost getting the whopping 500 metres from the Tube station to the museum.

It really shouldn't have been that difficult. There were sign posts pointing in the right direction, and I had Google Maps on my phone. AND YET. In the end, it took me the better part of half an hour and several "HOW IS THIS SO DIFFICULT WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME???" moments to eventually get in the door.

Well done, Kirsti. Well done.

Eventually I got there, though, and promptly headed into see the Egyptian collections, because that's what you do at the British Museum, yes?

Unfortunately, everyone else who visits the British Museum has basically the same idea, so the Egyptian section was horribly crowded. I made my way pretty quickly to the Assyrian collection, then through the Greek and Roman sections.

By the time I'd done all of that, my feet were pretty sore and it was basically lunchtime, so I headed to the cafeteria for a nice sit down. After a couscous salad and a Portuguese custard tart, I pressed on. Because the problem with the British Museum is that there's always more to see.

I made my way through the old library, which is now dedicated to displays about discovery and object collection through history, and which was easily the highlight for me. I think it's because it was such an eclectic mish-mash of stuff. You could wander up to any showcase and have absolutely no idea what it would contain. The books certainly didn't hurt!

Then it was on through the South and Central American collections to see some of my favourite objects (which I used in a mock exhibition at university in 2008!) before heading upstairs to the Anglo Saxon collections, especially the Sutton Hoo objects.

Next stop was the Lewis Chessmen, then through the displays of clocks and money - both of which were oddly fascinating - before heading into some of the newer Egyptian stuff. By the time I got there, I'd realised that I was basically going through the motions and wasn't really paying all that much attention to what I was seeing.

So I checked out the gift shops (obviously), bought precisely nothing because I decided that I had enough bookmarks, and made my way back to the Tube station - WITHOUT getting lost this time around. I headed to one of the numerous Prets for a hot chocolate and a sit down, then caught the train across to London Bridge to wait for C at his office. The view wasn't too shabby:

When C finished work, we caught the train around to Leicester Square and headed to a random Italian restaurant for an early dinner. I had lasagne because I'll basically always choose pasta if given the option, while C had a FREAKING ENORMOUS pizza. I wasn't convinced he could eat the whole thing by himself, but he was determined to prove me wrong...

What a dork.

Dinner over, it was on to our activity for the evening: The Book of Mormon.

And let me tell you, it was the most freaking magical thing I have ever seen in my life. I laughed basically non-stop from the time the curtain went up. I laughed so hard I ended up with a headache. And it's entirely possible that we spent an hour watching bits of it on YouTube when we got home. I loved literally every single second of it, and I would go and see it again in a heartbeat.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's coming to Melbourne any time soon, so I guess I'll just have to go back to London to see it again!

Next up, I head to Greenwich which contains a sad lack of Thor. 

K xx

200 miles on trains is too many miles

Previously: we went to the zoo and the red panda was actually doing stuff!! 

The following morning, I bid Sara a sad farewell as she headed off to work. Then I got myself organised, and walked half way across Portsmouth to the Historic Dockyard. I must have looked very confident about where I was going, because I got asked for directions twice. Thankfully, one person was looking for something that I'd just walked past five minutes earlier so I was able to help! The other one was less successful, however.

After about half an hour, I made it to the Dockyard. I'd been planning on seeing the HMS Victory as well as the Mary Rose, but given that I was planning on catching a train at about 1pm and it was already after 10am, I didn't really have the time. Or, you know, the money. They tried to sell me on an annual pass at the gate, but my accent combined with my "..........seriously??" face must have worked enough that they backed off pretty quickly. Also, there was a TARDIS there and literally no explanation for it. I *may* have flailed briefly before realising that it was almost certainly a prop.

Ultimately, I decided to go with the Mary Rose. The last time I saw the Mary Rose was probably 1994, and it was still just basically a big room that you walked through while they sprayed the ship with water and a separate museum building. Now? There's a fabulous museum incorporating the ship at the centre, spread across three levels and filled with information about all the different parts of the ship as well as the people who sailed on it.

At the moment, it's kind of hard to see the scale of the ship itself. They've finally finished spraying it with polyethylene glycol, and the ship is being dried so there are big drying tubes everywhere, and you just peep in at the ship at various points.

So that part was ever so slightly disappointing, but the museum itself was AWESOME.

All the exhibits were fascinating, and I loved how they were centred around various members of the crew, complete with facial reconstructions. But I think my favourite part was learning about the galley - how the stoves worked, how the food for each mess was kept separate, how they were able to have open fires and make bread and all kinds of stuff ON A FREAKING WOODEN SHIP.

I also may have sniggered more than was warranted over what these daggers looked like without their long-gone blades:

Eventually, I came to the end of the museum and made my way to the cafe for a fortifying double chocolate muffin and a sit down before walking back to Sara's. I passed HMS Victory, HMS Warrior, and Spinnaker Tower on the way:

After another half hour walk, I staggered up the four flights of stairs to Sara's apartment, drank a massive glass of water, went for a wee, grabbed my suitcase, headed back down the stairs, and dragged my suitcase the kilometre to the train station. It was about as fun as you'd anticipate. I was a little worried that I'd miss the train I'd planned on catching, but I made it with enough time to buy a ticket and chill out for five minutes before jumping on the train.

It took about two hours to get to Waterloo, and thankfully the train was almost empty for most of the trip so I didn't feel guilty for taking up a block of four seats with all my stuff. When I got back to London, I then had to trek from Waterloo to London Bridge to get the house keys from C, then head back to his place to dump all my stuff.

I had a whopping 45 minutes in which to collapse on the sofa before heading out again to meet C at Kings Cross and jump on a train to Cambridge. The train was crowded with commuters, so we ended up spending the trip sitting very uncomfortably in a luggage rack. Upon arrival in Cambridge, we hightailed it down the road to The Cambridge Blue. We were meeting up with friends of C's from Melbourne who happened to be in Cambridge for a couple of days.

I have literally no idea what I ate, because it was months ago, but I seem to remember it being delicious. Also, shout out to the girl behind the bar who didn't bat an eyelid when I walked up and said "My brother wants a pint of something hoppy, and he said "surprise me"..." because C was sitting between a small child and the wall and couldn't order his own damned beer.

After a couple of hours, the small child was getting cranky, so we said our goodbyes and headed back to the train station to discover that we'd just pissed a train and there was a half hour wait for the next one. Obviously, I went to the M&S at the station and bought up on Percy Pigs. It shouldn't have taken that long to get back to Kings Cross, but TWICE on the way back, the train lost power. The first time, all the lights went out and we were all just sitting there on a stopped train wondering if we were about to be attacked by Dementors*.

Then the driver made an announcement along the lines of "I have no idea what's going on, but I'll try and work it out", and then proceeded to wander through the train with a torch opening panels and investigating things. We finally rolled - literally. It was like the train was running on fumes - into Kings Cross about 45 minutes later than we should have. Thankfully, we didn't have far to go to get back to C's, where I promptly collapsed into bed. Which isn't surprising considering my Fitbit tells me I walked 18.35km that day!

Basically, this. 

*may just have been me.

K xx

Next time, I suck at navigating and go to the theatre. 

Fluffy little feetsies

Previously, Sara and I went on the Harry Potter Studio Tour and it was totally magical (ha) from start to finish. 

The Monday morning dawned moderately warm and something heading in the general direction of sunny. Because England. We got ourselves sorted out, then hit the road heading to Sara's brother's house to pick up her niece. We met Sara's sister and her baby son, then loaded up the cars with babies and all the paraphernalia that goes along with babies and headed to Marwell Zoo.

It gave me a world of childhood flashbacks, because I'm pretty sure we went to Marwell Zoo a time or twelve when we were living in the UK back in the early 90s, though I'm sure it's changed a lot since then.

We started off with a trip to the penguins, where the wee one made a new friend:

Then we wandered over to the giraffes. There was a baby one, which was totally adorable.

After rather a long time hanging out with the giraffes, we went in search of Sara's favourite animal: the bongos. We couldn't see them anywhere in their enclosure, or in the indoor section, but we DID find this rather hilarious sign:

Finally, being the tallest of the group by a good three inches, I managed to find the bongo by peering over a tall fence. It had squidged itself into a corner up against the fence where it was guaranteed a nice rest.

By the time we got past the zebras (hiding in the shrubbery on the other side of their enclosure), the babies were getting squirmy so we figured it was time to stop for lunch. Which featured Pom-Bears (someone please bring them to Australia immediately) and a bird pooping in the baby carriage...

Our afternoon of animal viewing was rather more successful than the morning. Our first stop was the red panda, my all time favourite, and for the first time in approximately a million trips to various zoos around the world, the red panda was wandering around like a happy little camper. I was absolutely thrilled and could happily have spent the rest of the afternoon watching him wander around. I think the wee one felt the same way, because she kept squealing with excitement.

Eventually, I dragged myself away and we paid a visit to the coati, who were also having a jolly old wander around before heading through the reptiles, the monkeys and the lemurs.

We stopped for an ice cream break on the basis that the babies tooooootally needed to be fed, then we hit what was easily the highlight of the trip. I know, something actually managed to trump the red panda. I was as shocked as anyone. Yes, it was the end of the day and approaching - one assumes - feeding time for the snow leopards. So they were incredibly active. Well. Mostly.

There was a huge crowd of people on one side of the enclosure taking photos, and we realised that there was another viewing area. So we headed up there to find that it was deserted. And one of the leopards was pacing back and forth in front of the glass. So I was standing RIGHT THERE in prime position to get some pretty damned fabulous photos. Sorry, Man With a $10,000 Camera who ran up two minutes later. My entry level SLR and my kit lens trumped the pants off you. MWAHAHAHAHAHA.

LOOK AT ITS FLUFFY LITTLE FEETSIES!!

Ahem.

Needless to say, I was pretty thrilled. We saw a few more animals on our way out, like the hippos and the anteaters and the tapirs, but most of them were pretty unexciting after actually seeing the snow leopards doing things.

After a fairly disastrous trip to the bathroom - turns out babies and those airport style hand driers don't get along - we headed for home where we offloaded the babies and went to the pub for some much needed drinks and dinner.

Next time, I finally see some of Portsmouth and head back to London. 

What's your favourite at the zoo?

K xx