2018-05 - Natural History Museum (London, UK)

Mantellisaurus in Hintze Hall

There was already a line by the time I arrived at the Natural History Museum, pre-opening hour. Within ten minutes, the doors had opened; and, we quickly filed in. It's important to remember not to be distracted by the shiny new displays when entering the museum. The key collections are the dinosaurs and the collections of dead, stuffed animals.

Ichthyosaur fossil discovered by Mary Anning in 1832

However, I got distracted by the collection of fossilized skeletons of ichthyosaurs and pliosaurs along one of the hallways. Many of them had been discovered in Great Britain by Mary Anning in the first half of the 1800s. Her ichthyosaur is on display on the wall. The other giant sea fossils are this wall include a mosasaur.

Blue whale skeleton in Great Hall

To get to the dinosaurs, first you'll need to go through Hintze Hall, which is a grand open space. From the ceiling hangs the skeleton of a blue whale. Along the sides of the hall, there are fossils and stuffed animals that give you an idea of how many different specimens are in the museum.  It is a great introduction to the museum; and, there is an entrance directly into this hall. Which explains how I didn't realize how quickly the museum was filling up.

Giant deer from ~20,000 years ago

Another detour led me to the rooms of fossils and stuffed mammals. There are so many different species gathered in these rooms! Definitely a good place to take kids to see these animals up close. Giant deer, pygmy hippopatamus, camels, echidnas, embrithopods, and bears plus a host of many more animals.

Fossilized skin of an Edmontosaurus

With a sense of urgency, I bee-lined for the dinosaurs. But, it was too late. The galleries were packed with families and school groups. Even so, the fossils are very nicely displayed. The larger skeletons sit on the floor and stretch to the ceiling. The smaller fossil skeletons hang at or above adult head level. Therefore, it was possible (at least as a grown-up) to see and read about most of the dinosaurs. There were even some dinosaurs that I'd never heard of, such as the Albertosaurus, a slightly smaller dinosaur similar to the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Plus, there was a cast of part of the skin of Edmontosaurus!


Visiting the Museum:
The Natural History Museum is free and open to the public daily from 10 am - 5:50 pm except December 24-26. Map of the museum

2018-04 - Bath (UK)

The Avo sandwich at the Italian Gardens Cafe

What a difference a full night of sleep can make! We started this morning with a leisurely jog around Hyde Park. We saw several other runners but mostly pedestrians and many bicycle commuters. Afterward, we enjoyed breakfast inside the park at The Italian Gardens Cafe. I tried "The Avo", which is an avocado smashed on top of a large piece of sourdough bread, crowned with a poached egg with the orangest egg yolk I've ever seen. The side salad was rocket (arugula).

Before heading out to Bath today, we made a few quick stops, exchanging money and hitting up a pharmacy, which especially looked very old and well-used on the outside but clean, bright and well-organized on the inside.

Passing Swindon Station. Check out all the bikes on the racks.

Our walk back to Paddington Station was much quicker today. We arrived at 11:25, got our train tickets validated and just made it on the 11:30 train before it pulled out. Over the 1.5 hour ride to Bath, we passed by the towns of Chippenham and Swindon. For those who elect to take the train, you will need your ticket handy when you exit your arrival station in order to get out of the building.

Our AirBnB was a short walk from the train station. It's an amazing five-story, 250+ year home that runs all of it's radiators from a Nest thermostat. Plus, it's a short walk to the main attraction of this city, the Roman Baths!

Looking down on the Roman bath from the Victorian built terrace

On a Monday in April around 2 pm, there are no lines to get into the Roman Baths. We walked right in and purchased combo tickets for the Roman Baths and for the Fashion Museum (for those Jane Austen enthusiasts). The museum provides audio guides to everyone, in multiple languages for no additional charge. In English, there was even an option to listen to Bill Bryson's musings on the baths. While there weren't any lines, there were many people visiting the museum. It's a one way path through the museum with large arrows marking the flow.

The sculptures on the terrace above the Roman Bath

We began by walking around the terrace that had been built around the baths when they had been re-discovered in the 1800s. At that time, homeowners were complaining that there was hot water pooling in their cellars. Upon investigation, the authorities decided to purchase all of the homes over the bath and restore the baths.  On the terrace, the Scottish sculptor G.A. Lawrence recreated Roman era sculptures, including one of Julius Caesar (which has subsequently been replaced due to accidentally toppling into the baths in the 1980s).

Following the arrows, we learned about the source of the springs (vents deep inside the earth), how hot the water is (not boiling -- only 46 C / 115 F) and why the green color (algae).

Originally, these springs were discovered by the Celtic or Briton (depending on what you read) Prince Bladud who was banished from his father's kingdom when he contracted leprosy. Banished to the middle of nowhere marsh to raise pigs, he made the serendipitous discovery of the hot spring, which he bathed in and miraculously recovered from his disease.

At the main bath level

When the Romans invaded in 43 AD, the Dobboni people lived by the Sacred Spring, worshiping the goddess Sulis, of healing. The Romans quickly took over the area and were beginning to build structures here the year after, dedicated the goddess that they were now calling Sulis Minerva, a combination of the Dobboni goddess and the Roman goddess Minerva.

Lead curses inscribed in Latin recovered from the Sacred Spring

Curse transcriptions

At each level, there are videos of people dressed in Roman era dress performing their assumed normal daily routines. We circled downward in the museum, looking at artifacts along the way. There was even a full skeleton of a man buried in a lead lined coffin. He was from Syria. Lead appeared to be a favorite material of the Romans: even the curses that people wrote to the goddesses were inscribed in lead and thrown into the sacred spring.

Gemstones with intricate inscriptions used as wax signet rings

At the level just before exiting to the original Roman era pool, there are pulleys demonstrating how the Romans lifted the stones for the bath, a variety of bricks used within the bath and a collection of petite gems with intricate designs that could have been part of signet rings for sealing documents with wax.

Tepidarium with video holograph recreation of Roman bathers

We stepped out to the main pool and the tour meet-up point. Each hour, there is a docent led tour through the main and east baths. It is completely worth it! The tour guide took us through the three rooms on the East Bath, which are thought to have been for the women. The first room is the apodyterium, or changing room, where the bathers left their clothes. The second room was the tepidarium, where oils were rubbed on the bathers and all their hair was plucked. The third room was the caldarium, or sauna, were the bathers sweated out the oils. The room was heated by fires built at the corners of the room underneath the floor. The heat of the fires spread in between the stacks of bricks holding up the floor and heated the entire room. Only after the bathers passed through all of the rooms were they finally allowed to bath in the hot spring bath.

Lead pipe around the Roman bath

As our tour guide walked us out of the East Bath and back to the main bath area, she pointed out a portion of lead pipe still lying in the drain. She said that while the Romans knew that lead was bad for them, they continued to use it for plumbing, since it was such an ideal material for pipes. The pipe today is actually shorter than when originally rediscovered in the 1800s since people would snip off bits to sell.

After the entire, wonderful Roman bath experience, we were hungry! We stopped over at The Cornish Bakery and discovered delicious pastries. My recommendation is the chocolate torsade, a twist of croissant pastry dough with chocolate and sugar, suffused in powdered sugar. We ate our snacks as we walked the five minutes over to the Art Gallery.

Inside the gallery, the Bath Society of Artists Annual Exhibition is going on. The walls of the room are lined floor to ceiling with a variety of artworks by local artists. We were even given voting cards to vote for our favorite piece in the room. Upstairs, there is a room dedicated to pottery and china ware and a larger room of all the different art pieces that have been donated to the gallery over the years. The one piece I recognized was a 16th century recreation of Hans Holbein's King Henry VIII, which is just inside the door to the right.

2018-04 - Hyde Park (London)

After a direct flight from Austin to London (two airlines now fly this route: British Air and Norwegian Air), we arrived in London on a spectacular, 70-degree, sunny day. We met up with friends at Cafe Nerro and caught a bite to eat there (the double chocolate chip cookie was yummy) before catching the Heathrow Express train direct to Paddington Station, London. What a quick way to get into town from the airport!

Our hotel was only about 1/2 mile walk from the Paddington Station. It is a historic building that now houses many tiny rooms. Interestingly, we had to take the lifts up and down. However, once we arrived on our floor and walked to our room, we had to walk down five steps to get to our door. The photo of the room on the Corus Hotel spreadsheet must be taken with a wide angle lens. There are two twins with ~1.5 feet between them. Talk about cozy!

Just across the street from our hotel is Hyde Park. We walked into the park and saw people getting soft serve ice cream cones from a Rolls Royce Phantom II. The ice cream was delicious! Hit the spot on this beautiful, sunny afternoon. Ice cream in hand, we started walking toward Kensington Palace. The park is criss-crossed by a myriad of paths. In between the paths, people were stretched out across the green areas of the park -- picnicking, playing frisbee, there was even a volleyball game in progress next to a large pond in front of Kensington Palace. On the pond, several varieties of ducks along with beautiful white swans floated around the edges, looking for hand outs.

A statue of Queen Victoria heralded the entrance of Kensington Palace. It had been erected by her niece for Victoria's 50th anniversary of ruling Great Britain, in the year 1868. Behind her stretched Kensington Palace, which really just looks like a very large house. Victoria was born and grew up in this palace. We didn't pay to tour Kensington. Instead, we walked around the Sunken Garden just outside the walls.

Then, we meandered toward the southern part of the park to check out the Albert Memorial. What we had thought looked like a church from the north end of the garden was actually a large, four columned, roofed structure over a golden statue of Albert. At the four corners of the monument were collections of sculptures representing the four continents during the Victorian age: America, Asia, Africa and Europe. The monument quite dwarfed Victoria's jubilee sculpture in front of Kensington Palace.

Below the Albert Memorial was blocked off street where guys were playing street hockey. Just across the way, there was a large, circular building for artistic performances, the Albert Royal Hall. It was interesting to see the combination of memorials with public spaces.

We continued walking until we arrived at a map which showed us that we had only walked through Kensington Park thus far. Hyde Park is actually the other side of a small river running through the park. We continued onto the Hyde Park side and walked to two smaller statues: the Isis statue and a Peter Pan statue.  Hyde Park side was much more crowded with people; and, there were tennis courts, fountains for kids to play in and numerous paddle boats.

After all this walking, we were hungry! Off to our very first pub visit at Mitre Lancaster Gate, a pub only a block from our hotel. I tried a local, English cider on tap, Aspall, as well as a salad and salmon with bread. It was great to have these kind of non-traditional pub options, along with all the pot pies and roast beefs. We even ate some caramel pudding at the end.