Museums are for Playing Dress Up

Today, I slept in again which was absolutely delightful! After getting up, I texted two of the only people whose numbers I have here in London.

Annie had plans to go out to the Portabello Market, and Hannah had plans to go to the museums in Kensington. I chose to go with Hannah and her roommates, Katie and Whitney, to the museums today. So I hopped on the tube and met the others at their tube stop, and we made our way in to Central London to visit the museums in Kensington.

One note about traveling on the tube in London: during the week, most traveling is done, obviously, during rush hour. And everybody is, needless to say (but I'm going to subject you to reading anyway!), in a rush. So if you are not moving fast, you had better get out of the way, because people will get annoyed and pass you in a huff. Londoners aren't vocally rude like New Yorkers (few people will yell at you to move), but they will give you a nasty, annoyed look as they pass you.

Now, the thing is, this is not the case at all on the weekends. Apparently, on the weekends, nobody is in a hurry at all. The crowds are still massive, but instead of smoothly flowing in a quick rush, it's more of a slow shuffle.

This is what we discovered today, as we were finding our way from the Kensington tube station to the museums.

So, after making it out of the massive crowd, we arrived on the street where a woman was directing everyone to enter a specific entrance of the Natural History Museum, informing us that we could avoid queues by entering on that side. So we entered on that side, gave up our bags for a bag check (apparently the Brits are much happier to take your word for it that "no, I don't have any sharp objects" than Americans are), and then were free to explore the massive Natural History Museum.

The entrance to the Natural History Museum was incredibly cool, with a giant red earth-thing that took you in to the "red zone" (which is about the earth). Unfortunately, the rest of the museum was a bit of a disappointment. It felt a lot like things that we had learned in 3rd grade. It appeared to be geared towards kids, but I don't know of any kid who wants to do that much reading in a museum.

So we gave up on that museum and went to the Victoria and Albert museum where we wound up spending the remainder of the day. We viewed paintings, tapestries, silver, stained glass, and theater costumes. We played dress up in both theater costumes (real ones!) and mid-19th century fashions. Finally, as the museum was preparing to close, we left and made our way back to the tube station.

My final bit of advice to anyone staying in London is don't order pizza from Dominos, no matter how cold it is outside. I ordered a pizza from a Dominos that is located a ten-minute walk from the house, and it took an hour and a half (and three calls from the delivery guy) before my pizza arrived. But arrive it did, and I finally had my dinner (plus some left-overs for lunch!).

Tomorrow, the plan is a trip on the London Eye in honor of Valentine's Day!