Cocoon

After a very long sleep, I had a huge amount of energy and was eager for a London adventure, so Fred and I headed out to South Kensington, London's museum area. It was mobbed by people, which surprised me. It's been a long time since I've been there and I forgot how crowded it can be. Needless to say, the exhibition I would have liked to have seen at the V&A was sold out, but this just led to an adventure elsewhere. The Natural History Museum was very busy, too, but we ignored the dinosaurs and ogled at a dodo and a Glyptodon skeleton, which is enormous and has great detail. I particularly liked its tail.

We shuffled our way past the entrance to the main dinosaur section (it's extremely crowded at this part of the museum) and headed to the museum's new Darwin Centre, which we were extremely impressed by. The use of space is wonderful. A lift took us up to the fifth floor where we stepped into the Cocoon (pictured from the ground floor in my blip). Within the cocoon is housed all the Natural History Museum's plant and insect specimens. It's also within the area in which the scientists work. The whole cocoon is geared towards learning and it was lots of fun. Fantastic touch-screen technologies allowed us to go hunting for robber flies in Aviemore or fungi in Panama. It's the most innovative area of a museum that I've ever been in. Fascinating.

Afterwards, we had chips while watching skaters on the museum's ice-rink, then walked through Knightsbrige gazing up at Harrods with its outline lit up in the dark. We investigated various statues and mews, and all too soon came to Victoria and our train home. Another great London adventure thus ended.

Back home, the guinea pigs and I watched 'The Princess Bride'.