The Natural History Museum- LD10, September 12, 2015

Weekends are great because you have a few days off where you tell yourself you're relaxing, but actually you're going even more all-out and doing even more than you normally would on a weekday- even if you're an acting student. Although, at least you can sleep in if you'd like.

Our entire apartment slept in late this morning- a nice luxury, though I don't like losing hours in the day. After getting a little work done, Alexa and I left the Landward and walked to Hyde Park, with the intent of crossing it and getting to the Natural History Museum.

Hyde Park, according to Alexa, is more like Central Park in New York than Regents Park is. It's more wild, a bit more crowded, and absolutely huge. There's a lake in the middle of it where people can take out paddleboats and row boats, for goodness sake! We also saw a policewoman with a police horse, which was fun, and walked by several signs pointing to Kensington Gardens, memorials, statues, and more.

The Park- at the edge of the Serpentine

Exiting the park where we did left us on a posh road with grand white buildings. Almost all the courts and roads and buildings were named for Prince Albert, there were a lot of expensive cars, and several of the buildings turned out to be consulates for other nations. As we moved away from the buildings, we came up to old, but grandiose monuments that held museums, a Mormon church, and more. The Natural History Museum itself looks like it could have been a cathedral, if it had wanted to.

The most impressive part of the Natural History Museum, to me, was its design and how it displayed its artifacts. They are very good at creating an experience, and immersing you into the subject you're about to learn about. For instance, Alexa and I entered through a side door, where we were greeted with a dinosaur skeleton, a full-wall mural of constellations and stars and planets (on both sides of us), and a giant escalator going up through a glowing red sphere.

Here, just have a picture

 Going up into the escalator was along the lines of moving into the center of the earth. We reached the next level, and went right into an exhibit on volcanoes, earthquakes, tectonic plates, and gemstones across the hall. Again, the minerals room was set up beautifully. If I had stopped to read every plaque on the walls and in front of the rocks, I would be an expert on the subject. It's put in an order and arranged in a fashion that's so easy to move through and easy to get enthralled in. The Earth section of the museum (the Red zone, in case you go) ended up being one of my favorite parts of the whole museum. Their selection of displays was fantastic too.

In this magical room of shiny objects, we met up with Alex, Charlie, and Ari. Ari left to go check out Buckingham Palace, but the rest of us had either just gotten there or still had a lot of the museum we wanted to see. So, we headed to the Vault, which started with more minerals and rocks- too many to even look at them all- and then led into a small room with the museum's rarest stones. I saw a few rocks from Mars, the Aurora diamond collection, and a cursed amethyst, which all stood out the most to me. Actually, the Aurora diamond collection was my other most favorite part of the trip. This is a collection of diamonds that contains every single color you can naturally find with a diamond. There is one diamond for every color arranged on a triangle. Alone, that is incredible, even though the diamonds themselves are small. However, under an ultraviolet light, some of the diamonds begin to glow. It's gorgeous.

Right as they were beginning to glow...

The glow effect.

Alex and Charlie were excited to see the dinosaurs, so we went there next. Honestly, the Natural History Museum in LA has a better collection of dinosaur bones by a long shot. However, they set up their exhibits very well, as I've already mentioned. Plus, their T-Rex was an animatronic T-Rex, so it felt like you got to see one for yourself, in real life. So that was fun, even if a bit underwhelming.

T-Rex alert!!!

We wanted to see a skeleton of a blue whale, but the exhibit is under construction, so we left and found a late lunch. While wandering around, Alex found a place that sells Belgian waffles. I've never seen him this excited before, we had to stop and get some gelato and waffles on the way back. Throughout this entire experience, we bid God to save the Queen quite a few times.

Since we had daylight and time and a bit of energy, we took some time to explore Hyde Park. We ran into the Prince Albert Memorial first, mostly because it was HUGE and hard to miss. Victoria must have really loved that man.

To give you a scope of the size...

From the front. That's Albert, in gold

What's up, Al?

Apparently, it's meant to symbolize how Albert embodied the spirits of all of the super famous people engraved around the base of his platform- these are figures like Shakespeare, Homer, Davinci, Michaelangelo, William the Conqueror, and even more than I can remember. He also supported and cherished art, so there's the muses up near the top, and then Agriculture, Commerce, Engineering, and... something else, but they were all displayed right around the edges of his little gazebo in the center. Albert himself, of course, is elegantly posed, and made of gold. At the very edges of the monument, higher than we can reach but at the base of the stairs, are four more sculpture collections embodying the other continents of the world. I think this is either symbolic of the British Empire, and it containing colonies in all those continents at the time, or something else symbolizing Albert's goodwill and generosity or curiosity towards the world or something along those lines. But the Americas were included- lady liberties, buffalo, and Native American in tow.

'Murica

Next we visited the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain. It's certainly not as grandiose, but in my opinion, much more elegantly symbolic and touching. Much like Diana, I suppose. I'm afraid I don't know much about her or her story, or her legacy, really. Just that she was a great woman who died too soon.

Our feet were tired, so we headed back to the Landward. Alexa and I needed to zip over to Waitrose first, however, and while we were there, we made the best discovery:

CRUMPETS

We found Crumpets. They exist. They're real. We can have them with tea. Tea and crumpets. I'm having a tea and crumpet tomorrow for breakfast so help me or else I am not in London. I'm so excited. They're pretty much English Muffins, by the way. We just call them English Muffins because... Well, we're American, I guess. We just do.

A few hours later, we left for quiz night at the Liberty, the pub right across the street from the Landward. Normally, quiz night is on Thursdays, but it was Nahome's birthday earlier this week, and the manager made a deal with him that if he could get a group to come, we could do a special American-themed, birthday quiz night. Nearly all of BADA showed up, and my team pretty much got second place. It was a great deal of fun, and I got to know a lot of my classmates better. Good times, good times.

But if I don't wake up tomorrow, I won't be awake for my tea and crumpet. Also, if I don't spend a solid 10 hours off my feet, they might fall off and my knee might snap. Anyone out there know a helpful way to soothe aching knees as a result of walking so much? We did a solid 6 miles just today- probably more, and about the same yesterday.

Tomorrow will be more chill. Fight on, friends.