Timeout says:
As well as its famous collection of dinosaur bones, the Natural History Museum has a number of stuffed animals, including an enormous polar bear.
Dave did:
Ok first point to note, if you ever, EVER, need to get an idea on how mad your life would be with children in it...just pop down to the Natural History Museum on a weekend afternoon! Madness is not the word for it!!
On entry into the museum I was welcomed by a large dinosaur skeleton (or skellington as I overheard one mother explain to her 2 year old...*sigh*). Obviously this wasn't a personal greeting on the extinct mammals behalf, but nonetheless it was a very different opening scene to most museums I have visited of late.
That said, however, I couldn't help but immediately compare it to the History Museum in Chicago which I visited just over a year ago. Both museums are very peculiar in that they seem to be identical in terms of layout, design and build structure/architecture. Part of me started to wonder if this was more than a coincidence...and who was the first to think up this mixture of history and modern exhibition.
By the looks of things London may have been the imaginative one, and bonafide original as both London and Chicago made use of the dinosaur greeting. However, where London opted for this skeleton...
A plant-eating Diplodocus, Chicago clearly wanted to go one better and came up with this...
Oh yeah, that's right! A full blown meat-eating (human-eating if you believe Spielberg!) T-Rex!! Now which one is gonna catch your eye and make an immediate impression huh? London has to do some homework I think!
Anyway! Back to the purpose of this visit, and what I have now termed "The Hunt for the Stuffed Polar Bear!"....like the Red October. But. Not. (!)
The National History Museum is a maze...and just when you think you've rediscovered the reception area, you find yourself in another tourist shop! But in getting lost in this maze I did make a number of discoveries in the taxidermy department...
I present to you - the Two-toed sloth!
But may I take the liberty to point via magnification one thing:
...I rest my case...
Next up was the tiger devouring a deer or Onyx of some sort, special mention was made by the child beside me at the time of the 'realism' in the tigers tongue...
Round the corner, and I found two rabbits adopting the traditional Waltz position...
And then it was time for the stampede of all living mammals! Who would have thought the Rhino and the Blue Whale would unite as one (not literally of course) and fight for the greater good...
But alas...after wandering around for a good hour...I found my polar bear and all was well in the world!
93 down...907 Things to go!
No comments:
Post a Comment