Alex's Asian Adventure

Another day of walking around town. We got up lazily, got breakfast and Marks & Spencer, and went over to Hyde Park.

Last time I was in Londres was 12 years ago. At that time, Marks & Spencer was this super high-end clothing shop for the criminally rich. Now... it's moving in the Walmart direction, only a LOT nicer. It's something of a blend of the good foods at Fortinos and the reasonably-priced clothing at The Bay. The food selection is quite nice, and it's reasonably priced by London standards. I was moderately impressed.

Anyway, Hyde Park is a park. Some of the residential neighborhoods appear to be mind-blowingly expensive. A 3-bedroom apartment goes for half a million pounds. Madness!

We were in search of adventure, and since dodging traffic isn't enough of an adventure we went to.... the Museum of Natural History. Why? Because apparently this place has some jarks of formaldehyde that contain animals collected by Charles Darwin. The Dahmer-fan in me is always interested in jars of formaldehyde. Unfortunatey, the exhibit was closed. Plus, the place was packed and there's only so much time I can spend looking at animal remains.

Instead we ended up the London Science Museum, which is free, huge, and awesome. It also had nowhere near the number of people as the Natural History museum. We somehow managed to spend a few hours wandering around the place and looking at fun stuff. It's a bit like an up-end version of the Ontario Science Centre, with more emphasis on things adults would appreciate, like tanks and missiles and cars and things.

Probably the neatest exhibit was this Vicker's Vimy biplane. This is the reconstruction of the plane that first crossed the Atlantic Ocean, back in 1919. Apparently, the two brilliant guys who did this took the plane apart, shipped it to Newfoundland, reassembled it on a field, knocked a wall down & cut some trees to make a runway, and decided to fly the plane back to England.

That is to say, they built the plane, and flew straight back to England without so much as a test flight first.

My theory: they were in Newfoundland and were drinking some screech before the flight. What other reason could there be for these guys to take a rickety little biplane bomber across the Atlantic, having just assembled it on a field?

Doing something tonight, not sure what. Time to stop writing inane commentary and go out.