(Being the museum-themed events of:)
MAY 31 - JUNE 2, 2011
Man, the days are just flying by. Two days until I'm stateside again, for the first time in 5 months. Geez. Color me excited.
So, as planned, this final week has been all about enjoying the last bits of London I haven't experienced yet, as well as the bits that I'd like to have engrained in memory as my last moments of living in London. I continued with the museum binge with the last few on my list: the beautiful Victoria & Albert Museum, with it's art, history, and international culture exhibitions, and the slightly kid-friendly, yet enough I'm-kinda-a-big-nerd-and-get-excited-about-science stuff in the Science Museum.
Passing St. James' Park
So it rained a bit early Tuesday afternoon, and I was worried about making the hour-long walk to South Kensington, but then the sun came out so I thought I'd give it a go.
Halfway there, it of course started raining again. Oh well. As you'll see, the sun did end up coming out again and it turned into quite a nice afternoon.
Harrod's. Place surprises me every time with how large it is.
Just a neat building. This area is Brompton, I think..? Still in South Kensington, which is the over-arching area, and one of the more posh areas of London.
Just a neat church.
The Victoria & Albert Museum
Reminded me of like a smaller version of The British Museum, with its variety of historical artifacts, sculpture, and art.
An old map of the world, which I thought was cool
One of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks!
The architecture section, which was actually pretty neat with all its models and insights into the reasons behind different types of architecture.
The metal artwork section
Psh British people..
Looking down into the southeast Asia section, I think..? I don't remember. That was another thing that was similar to The British Museum: that after the main sections, they would have smaller exhibitions centered around specific cultures.
Psh, I've already seen the real David. No big deal.
.. and the real Trajan's column, seen here in two parts due to its size. Neat replica though.
The Japanese section, obviously.
Sculpture
Inner courtyard of the museum
Closer look at our friends from before.
A neat little section on photography. Gotta love it.
Crazy stuff going on in the central area of the museum
A quick look over at the Natural History Museum before calling it a day!
Of course, after walking all the way there through the rain, I had to take the tube back (with the sun now mocking me) to grab dinner in time to get ready for the show..
Waiting outside Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to see 'Much Ado About Nothing'!
Inside the Globe! What a neat place, with it's open-air stage and circular seating area. Although, we were down in the standing section for 'Groundlings' (must be Shakespearian for 'Cheap Folks'). But we were right up literally against the stage and two feet away from the actors, which was neat! Granted you had to stand for 3 hours, which was a bit of a bummer..
The stage
So close!
The show was absolutely fantastic! The actors were hilarious, and would even subtly interact with the audience sometimes. I never read the play, and didn't really have any idea about the story, but it didn't even matter - even though they spoke the old English and basically performed the play line-for-line, they were great and it wasn't hard to understand at all. And at the end of the play, who would have guessed there would be a random straight Bollywood-style, choreographed dance-routine?!? Yeah, it happened. But it was still hilariously awesome.
Oh, and did I mention one of the main actors was Joseph Marcell, the guy who played Geoffrey the butler from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. It was crazy.
I think that night I watched the movie 'Eastern Promises', which focuses on Russian organized crime in London and stars Viggo Mortensen (consequently, I'm watching Lord of the Rings as I type this. woah.) as a Russian "cleaner" for the mafia family. Now, I don't speak any Russian, but I assume his accent was pretty solid. At least it sounded pretty good to me. Anyway, pretty good flick, I must say.
--
Then on Wednesday, I finished off the last of the main London museums that I wanted to get to: the Science Museum. OK, I kinda gave into my nerdy/kid side, but I was basically a kid in a candy store, amongst actual kids. Which was a little silly, but I enjoyed myself.
AND it was another beautiful day, so I made the walk all the way back to South Kensington again!
Now, I've already been here briefly and snapped some pictures of the space section, so I'm just going to start off with the sections after that..
A neat old lighthouse lamp
Planes, Trans-Siberian Explorers, and Automobiles. I think that was the name of that movie, right..?
Apollo 10
The prototype of clock of the 'Future Now', with the ability to tell the year for the next 10,000 years. Crazy.
Man, it kinda makes me feel old when things I grew up with start showing up in museums. I remember playing with Mike's Super Nintendo Entertainment System back in grade school, and still own my old GameBoy!
Section on time.
Anyone know what time it is?
This thing was kind of neat. It was called the 'Listening Post' and had the tag-line "Hear what the Internet sounds like!" or something like that. It was basically like 100 little LCD screens that would flash different words and phrases, while a computer-voice read them out - and the words were all compiled from random tidbits of chatrooms/forums from all around the net. Pretty crazy. Plus it's always fun to hear a computer say things like "I'm a 16-year-old girl!", "Rockin' out to some Metallica", and "What's going on, bro?"
My major, 100 years ago. Back when Computer Engineering meant 'I built this huge thing to add two numbers and take an hour to give the result'.
ERNIE = Electronic Random Number something something. Basically, he was built back in the day to choose numbers 'randomly' for some drawing the government was doing for something or other.
The marine section was MASSIVE. We're talking hundreds of ship models and different kinds of ship engines. I'm not a huge boat-guy, but you gotta respect how they built some of these monsters back in the day.
The Queen Elizabeth
Some battleships.
Aaaaand that was about it. Well, at least that I took pictures of. I spent a good amount of time in each section, checking out the neat things, making sure I'm still a bit of a nerd. You know. But eventually, called it a day and started the long walk back home in the beautiful weather. It's been a comfortable jeans-and-a-tshirt 65 over here, so I have no idea how I'm going to be able to go home to the 90s they're getting now. Ugh.
Saw this on the way home. Oh Ron, you're so silly.
--
And that was the last of my museum binge. It had a good run.
Last night, I went out for one of my pal's last night goodbye festivities, hitting up a couple bars, karaoke here and there, and ending at one of the campus bars. Fun night! Sad that it's one of my last in London..
.. but getting ready to go home at this point. Only a couple more days! I think tomorrow I'm just going to take a day to stroll through my favorite parts on London, maybe grab some fish 'n chips for dinner as a last hurrah. Maybe grab drinks to say goodbye with some people.
Then it's just the long plane ride home..
Good music of the moment:
Radical Face - "Homesick", off their album "Ghost"
Woah. Once again, this just happened to be the song that came on iTunes. Crazy how relevant songs keep randomly popping up.
.. Oh wait, never mind. As I was typing, it changed to Say Hi's "Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh", which isn't very relevant at all.. How silly.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two days left.
Cheers!
