Learning sans FCPS

In honor of me missing my first day of school tomorrow (FCPS = Fairfax County Public Schools by the way) I have decided to go out into London and learn! It was like a loooong history lesson in the arts as well as architecture and a dash of neuroscience on the side. 

The first museum I visited was the Natural History Museum. The building was beautiful both inside and out. I don't want to say that the stuff inside the museum didn't amuse me but I loved taking pictures of the architecture from the inside. The intricate columns, the detailed ceilings, the grand staircases. It was all amazing. Now there must be a rule somewhere that Natural History Museums (which, by the way, does that mean there's artificial history somewhere?) must have some type of large skeleton or pretend animal. There was a "long plant eater" on display and the giant Elephant in DCs MNH and the Dinosaur in New York's...I spent a while in the gemstones section and then I traveled down to the history of birds or something and then progressed on to a cool exhibit about the impact we humans are having on Earth.

Plant Eater!

There were different species of plants on each tile on the ceiling.

I didn't plan on stopping by the Victoria and Albert Museum but since it was in between the NHM and the Science Museum I decided to take a quick peek. I was very glad I did. The artwork inside was amazing (I really need a thesaurus don't I?) I mostly saw Medieval art from Europe although it appeared that the museum also had large Asian and Islamic Middle Eastern sections. I could have strolled through the Victoria and Albert (amd it ended up being my favorite museum of the day so I regret not spending more time there) for the rest of the day but I had to move on. 

The  John Madejsk Garden courtyard

After visiting the V&A Museum I walked on to the Science Museum which was interesting but confirmed my growing suspicion that the only science related thing I will probably ever study is chemistry or psychology (which is more of a social science...maybe neuroscience would be better). Anyways I spent the majority of my time in this section of the museum called "Who Am I?". It was all about the human mind and how we view the world and ourselves. Things such as why we forget things we want to remember and can't forget that which we wouldn't want to remember, why we don't always act our age, is personality hereditary or do certain circumstances make us who we are. It was super fascinating!

The space exhibit

Old-fashioned cars!

The Museum's cafe which was very cool looking

There was a wall dedicated to naming several phobias.
I find myself to suffer from decidophobia when shopping!

Seeing as I was on a roll with the Museums I went to Tate Modern which is a modern art museum housed within an old factory on the Thames river. The outside looked rather, well, depressing but it was very cavernous inside and had cool photographs and painting inside. I'm not sure why but these were the only picture I ended up taking of the whole museum...I guess I subconsciously got tired of doing the whole tourist routine, photographing everything!

Hmm the clouds don't help this building look any less ominous...

Untitles (Bacchus) by Cy Twombly (American)

I don't remember what this was called but they were staircases that led  to the ceiling but since it was in red it kind of made me think about the message it was trying to send. Hmm...

 After eating again at a Wagamama (they should bring Wagamama to DC! For real not that poster that's been up since '09 on 7th St.) I concluded the night with yet another musical! This time it was The Phantom of the Opera! I really enjoyed it because it was vastly different than the other two I watched. For starters, the songs themselves had an opera feeling to them (well duh, Andre) which I dumbly didn't expect. But since I've never heard people sing opera I found it hard to follow what they were saying and didn't completely understand the whole play (especially the ending, argh!) The amount of scene changes was astounding! I feel as if they changed the props after every song, and even during! It' official, I have a new found love for musicals =]

Only picture I'm allowed to tale =/

UYL,

Andre