England Travelogue: The Museums

I originally didn’t go to London to be a tourist, I went to meet a bunch of friends. Unfortunately several of them backed down before I even left, and a couple more stood me up when I got there. Nick, Mike, and John were the only ones remaining, but Nick and Mike were working during the week, and John wasn’t scheduled to meet me in London until Friday, so I ended up spending quite a lot of time on my own.

Fortunately, London is among the better places to be alone. On day one, I bought a tourist map for 2 quid at an underground station, and I definitely got my money’s worth. Since I hadn’t planned any activities, it proved invaluable in helping me improvise, and it ended up leading me to an unexpected amount of museums.

I’m not usually a museum person, but I gotta say I was very happy with most of the museums I ended up visiting. The only museum that disappointed was the London Aquarium, which was… well, fish. I don’t know what I expected, but I’d heard good things about the aquarium, so I guess I was hoping for a bit of entertainment or at least more interesting information than was actually there.

I’ve already posted my pictures from Monday’s trip to Tower of London. Tuesday, I decided I needed to rest my feet, as three days straight of walking had reduced them to bloody stumps, though I did end up going to Covent Garden to do a bit of impromptu shopping (and pick up Phonogram, which I highly recommend). Wednesday brought me to the Natural History Museum, Thursday I went to the disappointing London Aquarium and then the excellent Science Museum, and on Friday I visited the HMS Belfast. Here are my pictures!

The Museum of Natural History is frickin’ huge. The venerable old building is almost an attraction in its own right.	Obviously the first thing I did was to go straight for the dinosaur exhibition.
Saber-toothed cat (smilodon californicus) in the mammal ward.	No creature has the right to look this ugly and be this big.
A lot of effort has been put into making the typically pretty dry subject of geology interesting.	Personally I think geology is fantastic though. Look at these minerals! Shiny!
I’m fairly certain ichthyosaurs were prominently featured in Half-Life (sorry).	Pretty neat optical illusion using 20 monitors and some mirrors to create a sphere.
The only thing in the London Aquarium worth photographing: A reasonably neat tropical forest scene.	The best part of the Science Museum was the steam engine exhibition in the first hall.
I love steampunk. And, by extension, huge machinery like this.	This is an atmospheric engine used to make coal mines into tolerable environments in the late 18th century.
The atmospheric engines were powered by coal-fuelled boilers like this.	Thanks primarily to James Watt and his rivals, steam engines were quickly improved.
Enormous contraptions like this had to employ some pretty clever systems to convert the steam power into the desired movement.	This is from the time when things had to look good, even engines – or perhaps especially engines.
It’s hilarious to think that a good 200 years after this engine was made, we’re still using steam to generate our electricity.	Even nuclear power plants are basically really fancy steam engines, using nuclear reactions to fuel their boilers.
I think about computer games far more than I want to admit, and this entire hall reminded me of the Thief games.	Although steam engines generally got smaller and smaller, gigantic engines like this were used to power entire factories.
So many details, every one of them a product of careful craftsmanship.	The shape of this reminds me of Norwegian masterpiece Flåklypa Grand Prix.
A detail from one of the most modern engines on display.	Moving out of the steam exhibition, here is an old telescope.
The world’s oldest steam locomotive (like, duh).	Crazy Brits, hanging old airplanes from the ceiling.
The dashboard of an old racing motorboat. Look at all those bigass dials! Endearing.	Believe it or not, this is an early particle accelerator. It’s like the great grandfather of CERN.
OH MY GOD IT’S A CRAY-1. Do you think anybody would notice if I took it?	On my way to the HMS Belfast, this is the shopping arcade Hay’s Galleria.
A very colourful ice cream truck.	The stern of the Belfast, occupied by children.
A sort of self-portrait.	START YOUR TOUR THIS WAY.
Inside the massive WW2 cruiser.	An electrical generator in the boiler room.
Christ, the engine room’s pretty complicated, innit? So many pipes.	Apparently it took 4 hours to generate enough steam to start the ship cold.
This is a huge mechanical computer used to calculate the firing vectors to hit the enemy.	Shell room B at the bottom of one of the four turrets with three 6-inch cannons.
Inside a uselessly inaccurate anti-aircraft turret. Since they couldn’t hit jack, they created a deadly cloud of shrapnel instead.	The Belfast as seen from the fo’c's’le. The guns are trained on a freeway north of London – they’re that powerful.
Some of the anchor chains extending from the ship’s bow.	The barrels of one of the Bofors anti-air guns mounted in the 1950′s.
Could not resist this shot. Also: Yay depth of field.	The rear half of the Belfast as seen from the ship’s superstructure.
The bridge of the old cruiser. Since the Belfast was a flagship, it had a seperate bridge for the admiral beneath this one.	Detail of the deck of the Belfast, near the middle of the hull from where they used to launch scout planes with a catapult way back around 1940.

That was the last of the photos I wanted to show you, but I’ll wrap this tremendous picture-dump up tomorrow with three more “bonus” photos and some more overall comments on the trip. After meeting John on Friday, I went with him by train to Manchester and stayed in his apartment there for a couple of days. Unfortunately John was such good company that I completely forgot to actually see the city, meaning I only got 3 photos of it, and one of them turned out bad. I will show you the other two tomorrow. Hope you’ve been at least moderately interested in my photos, otherwise you might console yourself with the knowledge that I’ll be returning to my regular game posts next week.