Sunday, January 3, 2016

[Europe Trip] Day 2 - London (Natural History Museum, London landmarks, Dorset Cafe)

26th July 2015 (Sunday).

We woke up early to visit the Natural History Museum as we expected a queue from online reviews.

We satisfied our stomachs with cheap and absolutely delicious breakfast from the Dorset Cafe (27 Melcombe St, London NW1 6AG, United Kingdom). We happened to chance upon it on our way to Baker Street Station. Highly recommended!!! The chicken was so tender and savory. *heart eyes emoji*


My friend commented that the bacon was very fresh too!


It rained when we arrived at the Natural History Museum (Well, it's London) via Gloucester Road Underground Station. We expected a queue, but didn't expect such long and snaking queues. According to online reviews, the queue at the side gate (i.e. not the queue starting from the tube station) was shorter. Thus, we followed the advice and found the queue rather fast-moving.

We went in the museum within half an hour and were awed by the beautiful interior architecture.


(Note: This was taken much later in the day, thus the museum looked very crowded)

I would highly recommend Natural History Museum. Learning is made interesting in this museum. Visitors can interact with the displays, and the explanations are in layman terms. There is also a showroom where visitors could explore the types of insects that could be found in  a house. 

The whole level 2 is devoted to chemistry (i.e. oxides, fluorides, metals...etc.), can you believe it! Seeing is believing, it would help if we learnt chemistry with something like this.


Speaking about metals, there is a corner on precious metals and stones, where the security is tighter than the rest of the museum.



Lastly, there's a comprehensive and elaborate exhibition on dinosaurs as well, which is the highlight of the museum and thus, required queuing.





It continued raining after we came out of the museum. 


We found out that the tube is closed. (It is common that the tube is closed due to heavy rain, and London rains a lot... please be prepared to take alternative transportation) and we took bus to the Gold Mine Restaurant to eat the famous duck rice. It's fat and fabulous. p.s. Just order the duck rice will do.




After which we visited the famous landmarks such as the Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Tower of London, Tower bridge...etc. 










It was a gloomy, rainy and cold day, thus not really the best time to sight-see. My friend almost got depression from the gloomy weather. This is the only time when we see sun, and we were so happy.


A side note, the rain in London is different from Singapore. In Singapore, you have time to prepare for the impending rain, which is usually heavy. In London, you can't tell if it's going to rain from the sky, as it was almost always gloomy. The rain could just drop suddenly and last between 5 seconds to much longer. It is best if you always have a windbreaker on. However, as the rain is usually light, and it rained so frequently that we became accustomed to it.

Lastly, as a Harry Potter fan, what's going London without visiting the King Cross Railway Station?
  

(of course, there's much more to King Cross than Hegwig and luggage)



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