England

London

We originally allocated three days for London. We were here for three weeks instead!

Initially, we were delayed to get some flights and visas finalized. But we had spent all of our time in Europe enjoying Europe, and were not really mentally ready for traveling in the developing world again. We needed some time to get the guide books, research the places, and make plans. We also needed some time to get mentally and emotionally ready. We know that independent travel in developing places can be difficult, and wanted to be ready so that we would fully enjoy it.

We also found that London makes it easy to just keep hanging around. We even resumed visits to museums. In France and Italy, we had visited so many museums, cathedrals, castles, and other tourist sights that we eventually just became overloaded. While in Prague and Berlin, we skipped some very famous places. But by the time we got to London we were ready for a few again. That was fortunate, because London has some of the very best museums in the world!

British museum http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/world/world.html

Turns out you can't just stop through the British museum. It is too compelling! We went back for three days, and still felt like we had only seen a glimpse. Unlike many other museums that have a particular focus (e.g. paintings of a certain time period), the British museum attempts to contain a full history of all mankind. The mission statement is to "illuminate the history of cultures, for the benefit of present and future generations".

While this may seem a bit presumptuous, remember that at one time the British Empire covered much of the world, and the British were eager to collect treasures and ship them back to London. As a result, guide books on places such as Egypt now advise that if you really want to see their ancient history and artifacts, then head for London, not Cairo. Maybe by today's standards it seems like a lot of plundering, but the result is quite a nice museum!

We were both quite caught up by the cultural history. While we are both educated people, we really didn't remember much about ancient history. This trip has been a remarkable teacher for us, as we learned and experienced the history and current implications of Asia and Europe. The British museum was great because it has everything, and allowed us to really study many different areas and also to integrate the picture into a whole. For example, we were able to combine together knowledge we have read about Arab and Muslim history with visits to Rome and Biblical stories.

The museum shows the world from many different vantage points. Have you looked at a map of the world with the Mediterranean Sea at the center and just including southern Europe, the mid east and northern Africa? Probably you studied it with respect to the Roman Empire, but instead it is good to follow it continuously from 4000 BC to now, and include the other civilizations as they flowered in Phoenicia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persia. I have previously considered those as separate histories (shucks, they are separate continents after all!), but by integrating them together onto one map, and then watching the various cultures sprout and migrate over time, it all comes to life.

Another equally telling world view centers the world around the northern Indian Ocean. In this case, Africa forms the western boundary, along with Persia in the northwest, and the world extends east through India to Southeast Asia. Again, there were great cultures and movements, such as the spread of Islam throughout much of this region. Watching the ebb and flow over the millennia again reveals a lot about the areas today.

We could probably spend a whole summer at the British museum. Seriously, rather than take a history course in college, it is much better to just hole up in London and go to the museum every day. I'd recommend it to any college student --take a term off and head to the museum! There really is that much there, and everything is wonderfully displayed and signed. If you get completely hooked on something, you then head up the street to the British library to learn more.

Natural history museum http://www.nhm.ac.uk/

The Natural History museum is one of the biggest draws in London. It is great for kids, with visual and involving exhibits. The life gallery includes one of the best illustrations of Darwin's Theory of Evolution that I have seen. It includes all of the fundamental components (mutations, the strength of diversity, isolation of species, and natural selection) with the classic examples. For example, you biology majors remember the story of the moths in London (near the turn of the century, the moths in London all changed from white to brown). Not only is the story repeated here, but there are exhibits with white and brown moths flitting around light colored trees, some of which are covered with sooty grim from the industrial revolution. It is easy to see why the white moths predominated before the coal burning factories sprouted up, and then the brown survived better later. Each of the various aspects of the Evolutionary theory is brought to life in a way that everyone can see and understand for themselves.

We only saw a tiny portion of the museum, since Rod really wanted to get to the science museum. But a real hit with kids right now is the flying dinosaur exhibit! Other exhibits were probably exciting to some people, but not us. For example, in the earth gallery is a cavernous room lined with row upon row of glass topped cabinets, with numerous examples of every conceivable mineral or rock!

Science museum http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/

You already read about our trip to the Science museum in Munich. The science museum in London is the other great one in the world. Rod, in particular, enjoyed it. In fact, it just made history by being the first attraction voted as the favorite tourist destination in London two years in a row.

Some parts were a bit dated. The computing and communications sections were about the same as any science and technology museum anywhere (although they did include several old machines that Rod has programmed, including a Digital Equipment PDP-8 and an IBM 360).

But most of the museum is top notch. The optics section was fascinating. This is perhaps unsurprising since much of the optics science and technology was developed in London by early members of this museum! Reminiscent of today's consumer electronics, optics gadgets were all the rage of wealthy Londoner’s, with each new discovery or development making grander toys available. Amateur astronomy and later, photography blossomed. But there were also many stages that I didn't realize. For example, there were several early attempts at motion pictures and many different contrivances. The first of these to be scaled large enough to project images in a theatre had a particularly nasty problem --they exposed highly flammable celluloid film to a hot carbon arc, and burned down a few theatres in the process!

The medicine section is fine, but is a bit dated. Munich did a better job capturing the tremendous advances in medicine, the huge challenges such as drug resistance and HIV, and the promise of genetics. The print and papermaking section was great, although we skipped through it fairly quickly, since Rod in particular has already seen and learned most of what it had to show.

The flight section was great, with many vintage aircraft, and models of everything else. I learned a bit of American history here. It turns out that while Orville and Wilbur were busy working at Kitty Hawk, the Smithsonian was funding a major effort of its own. Once the Wright brothers succeeded, the Smithsonian effort was dropped and the failed airplanes put into storage. A few years later one of the would-be-inventors, stung by defeat, insisted that his aircraft really was the first design that could fly; he just didn't get a chance to test them before the work was halted. He began a patent fight claiming rights to flying machines, asserting that his inventions preceded the Wright brothers work. Eventually, the lawsuit reached the point where the plane was pulled out from storage to test it. Unbeknownst to the Smithsonian, the plaintiff secretly modified the fuselage, the wings, the engines, and the controls using techniques he subsequently learned from the Wright brothers’ efforts. When the Wright brothers caught wind of this, they came up with a very simple solution: they called the Smithsonian to see if it would accept a donation of the Wright Brothers original Flyer. The museum immediately sensed an opportunity to have one of the most important pieces of history, and quickly withdrew support from the rival to put their considerable weight behind the Wright brothers! You can still see the Wright Brothers Flyer featured as the first exhibit when you enter the Smithsonian Air and Space museum today!

Another fabulous exhibit is the ships. I don't know enough to fully appreciate it, but there were models of every conceivable type, and I'm sure every famous ship ever built. The oceanography exhibit had less on oceanography than I expected, but had some great displays of historical navigation equipment and techniques. It is handy to know how to use several different types of sextants, since you never know when you might get lost at sea but happen to have one in your pocket...

The museum also houses a display on the London Eye, a giant wheel on the banks of the Thames River. Originally conceived as part of the Millennium celebration, the wheel was proposed to give great views of London. The wheel looks a bit like a Ferris wheel but in place of seats at large gondolas, and the wheel only makes one revolution every 30 minutes. The result is that you slowly rise to a view of nearly 400 feet in the air, making it the most dramatic item on London's skyline.

The project was initially rejected for the Millenium celebrations, but built with private funds anyway. Officially it was allowed just a one year life, now extended to five, but it is hard to believe that it will not remain for many years to come. Ironically, the publicly funded millennium project instead is the now discredited Millenium dome, a financial and public relations disaster for which the city is still trying to find a use.