I almost feel like it’s cheating to mark this off on the list as we only managed around a quarter of the fascinating delights that the Natural History Museum holds but it does say Go To… not See Everything there is to see… so, what can I say about the London NHM. Um… wowzers just about covers it!! Even from the outside this place is super impressive. It’s hard to comprehend just how much they have jammed inside this stunning building.
When you first enter through the Cromwell Road entrance (the main one) you are greeted by the wonderful Dippy, a 26 meter long cast replica of a real Diplodocus skeleton (which I have just discovered while googling shares the same birthday as me after being unveiled on the 12th May 1905! Obviously I’m not quite THAT old), and an overwhelming sense of where to start. There are four zones: blue, green, red and orange as well as other temporary exhibition areas.
Wanting to see the T-Rex we of course opted to start with the blue zone where all the dinosaur artefacts were stored. It was a great mix of fossils, hands on activities and animatronics which would make this the perfect place to take school-age children (in fact there was more than one school trip in progress when we were there for which I declared my jealousy at the culture London children are exposed to at such a young age.) We then continued through the blue zone to see the stuffed mammals which was extremely fascinating if not a little bit creepy at the same time. (I was introduced to a creature that looks like a very large rat that appears to walk on two long and thin legs and which Matt and I have affectionately named Leg Mouse forever more.) It was interesting to note as well the that the museum no longer collects new specimens for this particular collection.
Leg Mouse
I was also excited to find that the museum has pencils and paper on hand so that you can draw things as and when inspiration strikes. I took five minutes out to compose this amazingly accurate drawing of a dodo:
The viewing area above the main mammal gallery goes all the way around the room allowing you to see the life-size blue whale model from above as well as below – I actually couldn’t believe that there was a room big enough to house not only that but also another 100 or so animals. My favourite thing was probably the school of dolphins they had hanging from the roof although I was disappointed to see a lack of pink ones!
At this point we paused for a cup of tea and planned what to do in our last hour or two. We thought we had covered the majority of the blue area but we were very wrong indeed! Matt wanted to see the Creepy Crawlies (yeah I don’t get it either!) whilst I was intrigued by the are on the map marked The Vault thankfully they were close enough together that we could do them both before we had to vacate the premises. The Vault is in the upper part of the museum and the main staircase was just as impressive as the rest of the place complete with a statue of Darwin halfway up! The Vault was… well… a vault! This was where all the precious items were kept including the latrobe nugget, a Mars meteorite and my personal favourite, The Aurora Pyramid of Hope. A collection of 295 naturally coloured diamonds some of which even glow in the dark!
Diamonds are a girls best friend
With not long to spare I grudgingly left the room with the pretty gems to go and look at bugs… no really. After that amazing display I was treated to a visit to No 1 Crawley House. All joking aside it was just as fascinating as the rest of the museum just with the added “benefit” of my skin crawling most of the time!! (Especially when we were inside Crawley House and they had a fake wasp’s byke (I’m allergic to wasp stings!) Unsurprisingly I don’t have many pictures from this area so here’s a pretty one of a caterpillar and a butterfly.
And then, alas, it was time to leave but not before making my donation to the renovations of the Central Hall by making Dippy roar!
If you’re in London I cannot recommend this museum enough but do make sure that you set aside plenty of time and I’m pretty sure its possible to get lost in there for a week and still not see all of it! I’d say we did around a quarter of it in the time that we were there so at least two full days are required. I can’t wait to go back an explore the red and orange zones!
) A lot of 2011 was quite lonely for me but I used that to my advantage, to come out of my shell and met some fantastic people. I also met some of my heroes in the flesh that I probably wouldn’t have dreamt of meeting in 2010.
