Possibly more museums than i have ever visited before

The theme for today seems to have been museums/galleries. Let's work this out - we saw (in chronological order):

1. The British Science Museum


2. The Museum of Natural History


3. The Victoria & Albert Museum


4. The Tate Art Gallery


5. The Museum of Garden History


6. The Imperial War Museum

Not doing too badly there. So, let's see.

The day started with a wander through Kensington Gardens past the memorial which Queen Victoria had built for her husband after his death. It is spectacular and gaudy in a way that only royalty can get away with. In a way it is very moving, as it really does give you a good idea how passionate she was about him. On the other hand, the recent restoration job for it cost 11.2£ million, which is a fair whack.

Opposite the Albert memorial is the Albert Hall. Some people might have occasionally heard me mutter about the Albert Hall in Canberra, and at least one reader of this blog feels my pain when talking about the Friends of the Albert Hall. To those 'Friends', i say - Give up now, your little rug emporium does not compare to the real thing.

The Science Museum was good. It had a stronger educational element than Questacon, which is probably why i prefer Questacon. There were fairly detailed exhibits on the Steam Engine, the triumphs of British Industry, and Plastics (and managed to make that field seem a lot more interesting than The Graduate would have me think). Dad and I took a 'virtual reality space roller coaster' ride, which was decent fun although not terribly relevant to anything else in the museum.

The Natural History museum was unfortunately a dead loss for us. We spent more time drinking coffee there than looking at exhibits and then left as it all seemed a bit dull.

The Victoria & Albert was a mixed bag - it had an extremely impressive sculpture collection, but i wasn't terribly excited by their Chinese art collection which was a shame since that was what the parents wanted to focus on.

The Tate Art Gallery (the old one, not the Modern) was quite good, although since i'm a complete philistine it was probably wasted on me a bit. We had a nice potato and leak soup for lunch, although i still prefer Joseph's version. Mum had been really looking forward to seeing the gallery's Turner collection, but she was very disappointed with it. I actually liked a lot of the Turner pieces, but i was going in with zero expectations so that may explain it.

There were a number of impressive pieces there, but the one that i found most interesting was Waterhouse's 'The Lady of Shalott' , which i've always found very evocative. It was excellent seeing that 'in person'.

After the Tate we walked over a bridge on the Thames to the Museum of Garden History. I don't think anyone will be terribly surprised to hear that it was Mum's suggestion, not mine. I stuck my head inside when the parents went in, but left as soon as i heard the staff suggest a 'voluntary entry contribution' of 4£. Bugger that. I sat outside and read a book. Mum was very disappointed - she said it was poorly organised, and Dad said that it lacked a clear purpose and proper organisation (i suspect he is planning a hostile takeover).

We hadn't actually planned on going to the Imperial War Museum, but we ended up doing it as our last stop for the day since it was within about two kilometres of the Garden Museum.

It was very well done, although i got the impression that the Australian War Memorial may be a larger facility. We didn't do a full tour since we were getting pretty tired, but we gave their World War sections a look. They had fairly immersive 'Experience' tours of the London Blitz and a WWI trench (which smelled like they employed someone to come down and urinate there every day). Both tours were well done and evocative, and the sections were both well put together.

They were also for some reason running an exhibit on Ian Fleming and James Bond, and although we didn't do that tour i bought one of the tie-in books for Annie, since i know that she's a mad Bond fan. Still have eyes out for Mandy's present, but nothing has presented itself as yet.

So, i suspect that today i've been to more museums than i've been to in the rest of my life. Unfortunately i suspect that i don't get full value out of museums - Mum always says that she feels that she needs to go back and revisit them a few times to get everything she wants out of them, and i feel the same. Still, it has most definitely been an enjoyable day. Tomorrow promises to be very enjoyable as well - i'm very much looking forward to the play we're seeing tomorrow.