Day 7- London

We went to the National Museum of History on Monday morning. There were separate halls dedicated to bugs, birds, dinosaurs, sea creatures and mammals all of which would have delighted Robert and traumatized Clara.

What I loved most was the architecture of the building. It had a beautiful main hall that was three stories tall. This was my favorite of the museums/galleries we went to in London. This picture was taken in the Earth hall. There are constellations drawn on one wall and the solar system on the other with the escalator going up through this metal planetary structure.

This dinosaur was in the main hall. Chris took three pictures and stitched them together to be able to get the entire thing in the shot.

See what I mean? Isn't this room amazing?

That's 'ol Darwin seated on the stairway here.

And these skeletons were monkeying around down one hallway.

This was the mammal hall and had a full size replica of a blue whale as the center of the exhibit with all kinds of animals surrounding it giving you a good perspective of its enormousness. Well I'll be; I'm not getting the dreaded red underline so I guess enormousness is a word after all. For the record, enormosity is not.

Clara would've wet her pants when she came upon this guy. (She's got a thing about hippos. I don't think I ever wrote about the screamfest at the San Antonio Zoo last year.)

This little red panda would've been received well though.

We would've been frantically running for an exit at this point.

The dinosaur hall was very large and dark. You had to follow a path, first going up on a suspended walkway that ran from one end of the room to the other. At the end of the room was an animatronic t-rex against a background of trees and brush, lunging and roaring with a smoke machine going. Clara would have FLIPPED! We took some video of it and Robert likes to watch it over and over. After the t-rex, you weaved through the floor level of the dinosaur exhibit back to where you started.

After the history museum, we rode the subway over to the British Museum. This picture was taken on an escalator in the Underground. I was very surprised at how tall and steep the escalators were down there. You are a long way underground in some places. We ate a late lunch at a pub around the corner from the museum. Chris had a lamb and mint pie and I had a jacket potato (fancy term for baked). I wasn't nearly as adventurous as Chris when it came to dining. British food just sounds so unappetizing to me.

We walked into the first room of the museum and were a little overwhelmed, not knowing where to start. We were tired from all the walking and had wanted to get back to the hotel to rest before the evening, so we made the decision to go on back to the hotel and come back the next morning.

We went to see Wicked that night. We really wanted to see Les Miserable, but the ticket prices were astronomical, so we decided on Wicked because I had heard really good things about it. We both enjoyed it. I didn't know the story, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. There were several inconsistencies between the show and the Wizard of Oz book, but I tried not to let that get to me :) I kinda wish we had planned on attending more shows. It was a really enjoyable evening.