So, Akhlaq and I were trying to decide what we could do on Easter weekend and we decided to do what it seemed many other people thought would be a good activity on an Easter weekend where the weather was a bit blah – and that was to head to the Science Museum. I was supposed to meet Akhlaq, Batool and Bob (Batool’s sister) in the early afternoon but as usual, partly the fault of the demonstrations at Hyde Park and partly, from what the girls said, Akh taking so long to get ready – ha ha, they were over two hours late so I ended up taking a tour of a couple of the other museums in the area – the V&A (Victoria & Albert) Museum and the Natural History Museum.
To say that the two museums were busy was an understatement. It also didn’t help that each of the museums had security checks on all bags going into them.
The V&A was buzzing in the reception area but as I made my way up to the higher floors there was a noticeable drop in the crowd level which made it quite comfortable to walk around and explore. The V&A is a museum for decorative arts and design so holding all sorts of pieces of works from ceramics to furniture, and textiles to photographs. You could get lost in a museum the size of the V&A (with over 4.5 million objects!) so I limited my visit to only a few of the galleries like the Fashion and Jewellery, some of the British Galleries and Textiles.
Moving on to the Natural History Museum two long queues greeted me. As a hint for those trying to get in a bit quicker – today there were two entrances open – the obvious one out the front of the museum which snaked all over the place and was extremely long and there was one on the side, I think its called the Exhibition Road entrance, which was much much shorter. Having said that the lines moved fairly quickly and I think the wait was mainly due to security. Not sure if they were operating a 1 in 1 out policy though I imagine they wouldn’t want too many people in the museum all at once.
Once I got inside the NHM it was a madhouse with people absolutely everywhere. I did a quick run through the “space” gallery (love the big escalator up into the big ball or planet or whatever it is) but then got a bit annoyed with all the people so decided to hit the lower ground floor with “Investigate”. Open for everyone it well suited for the little ones because it was all about the hand-on approach – touching things, looking at things under microscopes, putting things together, drawing etc.
My favourite part of the NHM was going back into the main hall (where there is a giant dinosaur skeleton) and climbing up a couple of floors to look back down at all the people moving about the museum like ants. It was crazy!
By the time I was done with the V&A and the NHM Akhlaq and Co still hadn’t turned up so I headed over to the Science Museum to start having a quick look around as the day was getting on. On the way I saw this big crowd and went to investigate and it was a dude eating fire. Always entertaining for a few seconds of thrills.
I absolutely love the Science Museum – its just so much more interactive and cool and engaging than any other museum. Its no wonder that there was so many people, children and adults alike, who were here today. I didn’t get to see the Wallace & Gromit exhibition (something for next time) only because I didn’t know if we would have time to do it but its here until end of October so I still have some time. The other aspect of the museum which is pleasing is that its just nice to look at – everything has this cool factor that makes it just a fascinating place to be in. The Secret Life of the Home is a particularly interesting gallery where you can find out how ordinary things in the home actually work. Watch out for the poo in the toilet! LOL.
When Akhlaq, Batool and Bob finally made it we had about an hour left until closing (although advertised as open at 6pm the museum starts shutting down at 5.30 to get people physically out of the building by 6 …) so we immediately hopped into a simulator ride (nothing too exciting but okay) and then spent the rest of the time in the interactive Launch Pad.
Love the Science Museum!
What about Khans? Admittedly it wasnt the best food in the world and an iranian would have gone down better, but worth a mention?
Yeah – dinner at Khans. It wasn’t too bad. We certainly had a load of food. Service, was as usual, a bit up and down. Our waiter was a bit of a joke though. Such a laughing boy *shaking my head*