museum

This week has been pretty busy as we get everything checked off our to-do list before heading to Thailand on Sunday. On Wednesday we headed to the Natural History Museum as it had been recommended by lots of people. The building itself is very impressive, it is old but in very good condition with some very nice interior spaces.

The last few days in London have been very fine and quite warm for a change. On Thursday afternoon we headed out to Regent's Park for a walk around it and the London Zoo. All the flowers were in bloom and lots of birds were hanging about so it was very nice.

As reward for visiting the park and smelling flowers we went to the Royal Air Force Museum London the next day. It is quite a way north of London but still on the Northern tube line which made getting there easy. I have spent many years studying aircraft so it was great to finally see many of the planes I had read about in books. Emma on the other hand does not know much at all about aircraft so it was all new to her and quite an experience.

After our comprehensive walking tour the day before we decided to head out to the western side of Berlin to checkout Daniel Libeskind's world famous Jewish Museum. The Jewish Museum is renowned for its bold and evocative architectural design that successfully blends the narrative of Jewish persecution by the Nazis and a functioning museum for general displays. Recently the architect has also won the competition for the World Trade Centre redevelopment thanks in large part to his work on the Jewish Museum.

Berlin was obviously going to the a highlight of any visit to Germany given its significant position in history during the last 100 years and the massive rebuilding since reunification in 1990. We stayed in the centrally located Circus Hostel which is apparently one of the best hostels in Europe. We were quite impressed by the hostel, it had a nice feel about it thanks in large part to its very bold interior design. However compared to Dresden the rooms were not as quiet or comfortable and breakfast was not part of the nightly charge. The hostel is located  on the eastern side of the Wall but to visit there today it is very hard to distinguish east from west. This was quite surprising as I think before we arrived we had an image of gleaming towers versus brown ghettos in our heads when thinking of West and East Berlin.

During our first week in England Emma was battling a nasty cold which unfortunately for me I managed to catch this week. Consequently we have not been as active this week as along with the cold I have had a fair bit of work to catch up on. On Tuesday we visited the Science Museum in South Kensington. It bears many similarities with Te Papa in Wellington in the fact its very hands on and combines Disneyland style rides with scientific facts and artifacts. After the British Museum it is not as awe inspiring but the size and scope of the content is still very impressive. Inside there was large displays for every form of transport, medicine, computers and agriculture. Unfortunately a good proportion of the displays are showing their age but thankfully it does look as if the Museum is in the process of an upgrade.

On Saturday after lunch at the Italian cafe we headed down the road to the British Museum. The museum is probably the most ironic in the world because inside you will find nothing to do with Britain per se. What the Museum should really be called is the Absolutely Anything that is not British Museum as it reads as a scrapbook of colonial British conquest and plunder across the world.  Inside there are thousands of historic items from Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Chinese, Polynesian (plus a few hundred other cultures) history. The Museum itself is absolutely huge with three wings and a central public atrium joining them all together. Each wing is devoted to a particular geographic/historic region. It is pretty amazing to wander through 8,000 years of human history seeing everything from early African tools to the most complex of Roman carvings.