Au Natural

So, although my time has been spent of late being busy and at the same time feeling lethargic, I some how muscled in a visit to The Natural History Museum. I had never been before and quite frankly it is nothing short of world class, it makes the Millennium Dome look nothing more than a rather large circus tent. It is a spectacular place and I recommend you shove your little hinds over there.

The first zone I visited was the blue zone. Straight in there I was hunting out the dinosaurs and found myself walking through a corridor of stuffed birds. There were familiar ones like swans and peacocks but also some rather unusual ones like a black parrot and some kind of giant eagle. The eagle looked particularly menacing even though it was full of cotton wool. One swipe of those claws and I’d probably find that my eyes had been gouged out.

The actual dinosaur zone is pretty good. They have a lot of life size replicas such a Triceratops and the one that looks like a gigantic armadillo. You then sort of follow this trail and get to see a lot of actual bones and fossils from the Jurassic era. Some look like leftovers from an eaten family bucket of KFC but some leave you in wonderment. They had a display of some teeth that sparked of my imagination of just how big they were and how ferocious some dinosaurs were. For a brief moment I wondered what it would be like to be a palaeontologist but then Ross from Friends came into my head and it didn’t seem so good. The climax of the trail was to go past an animatronic of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. I wasn’t that bothered about seeing it because what I really wanted to check out was just past it.

I entered the Mammals area and it was here I saw the life like model of a blue whale. It was huge and looked immense. I couldn’t get my head around the fact it only fed on plankton as I walked around it looking in awe at its enormity. This to me was the highlight. The blue whale was surrounded by other large animals such as a hippopotamuses and the African Elephant. It was all just fascinating to look at and read about.

The other zones are impressive too. The green zone covers birds, ecology and creepy crawlies. There are fossil marine reptiles too which are pretty good to investigate but I found the different types of tortoise in the world the most interesting. The orange zone has a butterfly jungle and the Darwin Centre (but I didn’t go there because it was tours only). The red zone covered earth starting with ‘in the beginning’ right up until how humans are trashing the place. I also found myself engrossed in reading up on all the type of minerals earth has and where they can be found.

If you are ever in Londres, I seriously recommend visiting the Natural History Museum. It is an amazing place and it is absolutely free.