You didn’t think I’d forget,
did you?
I started the day on the
late side, because work had kept me up very late the night before, and I knew
the next day would be a long one with very little sleep before it. (I was right.)
On the way to lunch before a
trip to the Natural History Museum, through the window of the taxi I
spotted and was able to catch a bit of this fine statue of a boy attacking an
over-sized ice cream cone.
Click an image to see a larger version.
Wouldn’t it look fine next
to the Cone Man in my driveway?
When I first reached the
museum, the queue to enter was too long for my taste, so a trip to the special
butterfly exhibit seemed to be just the ticket.
Wow, was it.
Butterflies make people
happy. Everywhere I looked, people were
smiling and laughing at the beautiful creatures that were flying all through
the sealed space, eating from flowers, enjoying some fruit the caretakers had
set out for them, and just resting.
The exhibit featured 28
different types of butterflies.
I didn’t keep count, but I’m
sure I saw most, if not all, of them.
I know butterfly pictures
aren’t anywhere near as compelling as the creatures in person, but I’m going to
hit you with a few anyway, because they were so very lovely.
In a corner of the tent, you
could see some butterflies just emerging.
I found that particularly
cool to watch.
Outside the butterfly tent
stood two pieces of petrified wood
that the museum had dated as
being about 330 million years old. Very
cool.
The Natural History museum
is absolutely huge. Here’s as much of it
as my camera could capture from a spot near that petrified wood.
That’s nowhere near the full
length of the building.
I didn’t have the time to see
anywhere near all of it, so I focused on working my way toward the giant blue
whale and mostly stayed among the mammals, where the crowds—wow, is it
crowded—were the most bearable.
Though I didn’t take this
escalator into the sculpture of a planet, I loved the look and the concept.
Easily the biggest ammonite
I’ve ever seen, this one appeared to be more than two feet wide.
I know this is only a
best-guess reproduction, but if it’s at all correct, damn, the Dodo was a
strange-looking beast.
This griffon vulture’s
wingspan had to be at least five fight.
Seeing that thing swooping
down on you would be enough to give you nightmares.
This ichthyosaur is nearly
seven meters long and one of the biggest known specimens.
A woman named Mary Anning
found it in 1832. Known, according to
museum signs, as “the fossil woman,” Anning at age 11 became fascinated with
fossils and became a force in fossil collecting. Sadly, she died young at 48.
The next time someone tries
to tell you that no one omitted women from your science and history texts,
remember Anning.
This coelacanth, though
having long since lost its natural blue coloring, is still a scary-looking
critter—and a sample of a species that has survived around 85 million
years.
Just for Dave, this alpine
marmot; he’d shiv you if you looked at him wrong.
Ah, finally, the blue
whale. This photo doesn’t do its size
justice, but do note that you could tuck a rhino into a corner of its mouth,
and it would be about the size of a chaw of tobacco, were the whale to chew
rhinos like tobacco (which, of course, it does not).
I fell head over heels in
love with ruin marble.
I know that the limestone
ran and then under heat and pressure became marble, but doesn’t it look like a
magical cityscape? Absolutely lovely.
I’d never heard of or seen
cavansite, a rare blue mineral of vanadium.
If the museum is right, and
I’m guessing it probably is, people have found cavansite in only two
places: Oregon, U.S., and Wagholi, Pune,
India. A very interesting pairing indeed.
On a whim, a spin through
Harrods led to a sighting of this lovely ceiling in a part of the store’s vast
grocery.
The entire fifth floor of
Harrods is full of women’s shoes, real high-end stuff, and carries this name.
If you are seeking expensive
women’s shoes, I expect this is heaven indeed.
I spent the bulk of the
evening in the lovely Noel Coward Theatre watching the stage version of Shakespeare In Love. Though I did not at all like the film of the
same name, in large part because it depended so heavily on the performance of
Gwyneth Paltrow, whom I found believable neither as a man nor a woman, I quite
adored the play. The first act had a few
slow bits, but on balance I enjoyed it.
The second brought the story together and earned my complete love. I highly recommend seeing it if you get a
chance.
Be on the lookout for the
dog.
And that was a day in London.
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