London Day Trip

Equipped with guidebook, water bottle, umbrella, and small snack, I set off for London yesterday with the wife of a colleague of Tom's.  Getting to London involved a cab to the Cambridge station, a train ride of about 50 minutes, and a subway trip to our museums of choice.  Half the fun(?) of getting to a destination is figuring out how it can be accomplished in minimal time and money.  I'm not sure we accomplished either but we did get to where we planned to go.  There is a cluster of museums-- the Victoria and Albert, Natural History, and Science--all at one stop on the Piccadilly subway.  Another attraction is that these museums ask for only a small donation so that return visits are quite possible--and necessary since they are huge.  We started off at the V&A which is a museum of decorative arts.  The museum grew out of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (celebrating the Industrial Revolution) and was named after V&A when the present building was opened in 1909.

My way of seeing a museum is to start at Point A and follow what looks interesting.  The Modern Glass exhibit was okay (Chihuly--he's everywhere!!) but not great.  What was more interesting was the architecture exhibit next to it and then the view of the castings that the museum is famous for.  It's  a little hard to miss the huge plaster cast of Trajan's column celebrating his conquest of what is now Romania since it could be seen from several floors (Note. Guess Trajan didn't want his exploits to go unnoticed. This picture shows only half the column).  The room was also filled with castings of sarcophogi of the Medieval Age, gates and altar pieces.  The idea was that the castings would provide models for art students who couldn't afford to travel to see the originals.  This room was reminiscent of the castings we had seen at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. Plaster casting must  have been a big business in the 1800s.

The second museum we visited was the Natural History Museum and like all museums with dinosaurs, it was packed with families.  We steered clear of the dinosaurs but did spend a lot of time on an exhibit of human biology.  I wasn't as impressed with it as my companion was--it seemed like it was from the 1980s and many hands-on exhibits didn't work.  However, it was very frank in its discussion of human heterosexuality and even touched on the question of abortion, two topics I'm not sure would be seen in general American museums.  What did look appealing to me was something new called "The Cocoon" which  talked about the collections at the museum.  We had to leave at that point (and even then missed the train back to Cambridge) so it will be something to see on a return trip.

(The black stump in the foreground of the picture is from an ancient tree which was growing about the time of the early reptiles.)

With all the museum visiting we did plus the trip to a mall afterwards, we didn't really see "London Outside."  I hope to go back with Tom and just walk and walk and walk...