What I Did With My Life On My Day Off :)

Todays Wednesday which means....No class for Kelly ! :)

I was a bit worried about what I'd do all day since Cadence's dad is here which means to Underworlds action, and I didn't want to be inside all day since it's like 55 degrees outside and sunny. After about 2 1/2 minutes of thought though it was clear that I should go to a couple museums. So I looked in my little London guide and saw that The V&A Museum and The Natural History Museum were right next to each other and about 10minutes from CAPA. So I slept in till 11 (it was beautiful) and I headed out, packing a sandwich and a clementine for my lunch.

I went to The Natural History Museum first and was surprised to discover that it was basically a dead zoo. Seriously. I can't remember exactly how many creatures there were but about 90% were all living at one time. I took a bunch of pictures and some video of the T-Rex's for the Fudge so my batteries died by the time I got to The V&A. It was actually pretty cool because when you walk in your greeted by Dippy the Dino. We have this huge statue of the dino outside the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh but these were all bones. Then if you go left there's an entire dinosaur exhibit that I found pretty interesting. The dinosaurs in Pittsburgh are way better, but the exhibit here was much more kid friendly (there were tons of them) and at the end of the museum there's this huge robotic T-Rex that moves around and roars at you when you move. It's supposed to be life size and what an actual T-Rex would look like. Some of the littler kids thought it was real and started crying which I thought was pretty funny because they were all about the bones but when they saw "the real thing" it was time to turn on the waterworks. Fudge would've died. Gotta remember to add that to the list when they come over.
They also had this enormous Blue Whale hanging from the ceiling. That wasn't a real whale it was plastic or rubber or something but again it was as big as an actual Blue Whale and was kinda intimidating. You know how big a Blue Whale is, but when you actually stand next to it you realize that the length of your body is probably about 1/3 of the size of it's head's width. They also had these things to show you the difference between a horses leg and an elephants leg and how they work. What you do is press down on the horses leg (pretty easy) and then you press down on what's supposed to be an elephants leg. I watched this little girl try to do it first but she couldn't because she wasn't even as tall as the leg, so her older brother who was probably 8 or 9 walks up to it like he's the man and can't do it either. I was trying really hard not to crack up. They left and I tried the horses leg, no problem, and then I tried the elephant leg. I shouldn't have been laughing at those kids. I swear the thing weighed as much as I do if not more. I couldn't move it, at all. I felt better though cuz I saw a pretty big dad trying to do it later and he got it to go down maybe an inch.
The building itself was pretty too. I took some pictures of the inside and outside. They have monkey skeletons hanging from one of the ceilings too which I thought was pretty cool. Gross, but cool. They had mammals, and reptiles, and amphibians, and bugs, and birds, and all kids of underwater life. There was this one glass box in the bird hall that was filled with hummingbirds. Seriously there were at least 200 in there. I'll try to get a picture up. I really had a good time. I probably spent close to 2 hours in there before I left.

When I got to The V&A (which stands for Victoria and Albert, NOT vaginal and anal like some smart-ass Brit told me) Museum I sat on the steps outside and ate my lunch and watched the people walk by before going in. Man you see some crazy-looking people over here, forget the South Side that's mild. It really is gonna be weird going home after all this.
I liked the V&A too, not as much as The National Gallery or The Natural History but more than The British Museum. They have this out of the ordinary art exhibit going on right now which was pretty interesting, it made me think of Reenie. My camera died after that though so not really any pictures from there. When you walk in there's this huge glass art piece/chandelier hanging from the ceiling. It was really beautiful, I had a good time. They also had this really big wing filled with sculptures an statues that Queen Victoria collected. There's a cast of Michelangelo's David in there and a bunch of other crazy stuff. There's also a lot of cast iron which i thought was kinda out of place. But hey, whatever the queen wanted, the queen got. A lot of the stuff that was in there came from Victoria or Albert, although there was a lot of stuff from the Middle East, Asia, and Japan too. It was pretty cool, I'll let them decide if they wanna go when they get here, I'm not gonna make them go like I will to The National Gallery.

I had my Jack the Ripper walk last night too. That was a lot of fun. Our walking tour guide got really into in and walked us to each murder site and told us all kinds of stories and conspiracy theories. We went down a couple really narrow alleys with lots of pubs on either side and it kinda gave us the feeling of what it would've looked like in 1888 when it all went down. There was even a picture of Jack the Ripper spray painted on one of the alleys, pretty scary... We went past the 10 Bells too which was the pub that all the prostitutes that were killed went to back in the day. It's called the 10 Bells because it's right next to this big white church that was built in the 1770's that has 10 bells in the steeple. It was kinda chilly out last night too which helped add to the effect of what London would've been like during the murders. He also told us his theory and that this one artist, I think he said his name was Walter Sickley, I could be wrong, left clues to who the real Jack the Ripper was in his paintings that are still hanging in Tate Britain. According to this artists it was Dr. Gull and his clues include tiny seagulls in all of his paintings and grapes because he loved grapes and a couple of his victims had grapes in their hands. I really liked it, and it only cost us £5. I don't know if Mom and Chal will be into it but Fudge and Ankita probably will be, maybe I can talk them into going.

Well that's all for now, I have a g-mail date with Ankita soon that I must make so until next time
Peace