Back when we lived in Ohio I was in a fantastic book club based on childrens and young adult literature. We read this great book called Framed, by Frank Cottrell Boyce, in which a boy from a small town in Wales decides he's going to save his family's gas station by stealing Van Gogh's Sunflowers from the National Gallery and replacing it with a paint by numbers. Ha! Hilarious!
I had to see Sunflowers! The National Gallery is a wonderful place, I'm sure, but I was pretty certain it wasn't going to be very Samuel-friendly. I decided to go for bribery. Note to self: It doesn't work.
I took the kids to Rainforest Cafe for lunch, all the while reminding them that I was doing a wonderfully nice thing for them and that I fully expected to be repaid by good behavior at the National Gallery. Lunch went well, and then it was time to get Samuel back into his stroller. Another wrestling match. Things weren't looking good for a peaceful gallery visit, but a McVities kept him quiet on the short walk between Picadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square.
The National Gallery is a beautiful building. I made sure that we saw Sunflowers first, and things seemed to be going along just fine. We went through four or five rooms where we saw paintings by Cezanne, Renoir, Van Gogh, Gaugin, Monet and others.
Evie's favorite paintings were Van Gogh's Farms Near Auvers and Renoir's Gladioli in a Vase. Johnny liked Rousseau's Surprised! best. I had him comparing different artists and techniques, and we were admiring the pointillism in Seurat's Bathers at Asnieres when Samuel decided he'd had quite enough of fine art, thank you very much. The screaming I could handle. It was the throwing of shoes that made me look for the exit. I could just picture us getting hauled off to Scotland Yard or wherever it is they take people who destroy priceless works of art with kid-size crocs.
So it was a nice but short visit to the National Gallery on Monday.
Tuesday we went kid-friendly again and explored the Science Museum. At the kids' request, we also headed back to the Natural History Museum (right next door) to see some things we'd missed on our first visit.
The Science Museum is heavy on the Industrial Revolution, for obvious reasons, and had lots of old steam engines and early factory machines. Here are the kids doing 007 impressions in front of the oldest surviving steam locomotive.
So this Model T isn't British, but it's cool anyway.
The kids really enjoyed the section on space exploration. I did too, but I couldn't help but notice that nearly everything in the exhibit came from the U.S. or Russia, with the exception of some German V-2s and other rockets left over from World War II. They did have the space suit of the first Briton in space, Helen Sharman, who went to the Mir space station in 1991. 1991! That's 30 years after Yuri Gagarin. I guess I'd never thought about how uninvolved most of the world has been in space exploration.
Here's Johnny checking out a first edition copy of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon.
We also saw a moon rock from one of the Apollo missions ...
... a replica of the first European satellite (note the symbolism of this photo: Johnny and Evie are satellites in erratic orbit around a fixed point that is Samuel) ...
... and this really cool floating Earth on which satellite images were projected. We saw weather patterns, ocean currents, chlorophyll levels as seasons change, electric lights at night, and airline flight tracking. This was my favorite exhibit.
Johnny and Evie liked this wall of light best. It stretched up four stories, and the moving lights seemed to interact with each other. The words you see are comments that visitors have left at the various exhibits.
Johnny and Evie have been begging to go back to the Natural History Museum, so that's what we did in the late afternoon. We entered through the Earth Hall and learned about how early myths relate to geology, astronomy and the fossil record.
The Earth's Treasures exhibit was full of useful minerals, crystals, gemstones, and these pillars of petroleum.
We passed these dodos (the birds, folks, not the kids) on the way to see more fossils.
This one's a giant sloth.
And this one is something enormous that once lived in the ocean. Johnny was very impressed.
Tuesday turned out to be a really fun day. I've learned a great lesson over the last week and a half, though. When traipsing about London, one adult and three kids is not enough adults.
I had to see Sunflowers! The National Gallery is a wonderful place, I'm sure, but I was pretty certain it wasn't going to be very Samuel-friendly. I decided to go for bribery. Note to self: It doesn't work.
I took the kids to Rainforest Cafe for lunch, all the while reminding them that I was doing a wonderfully nice thing for them and that I fully expected to be repaid by good behavior at the National Gallery. Lunch went well, and then it was time to get Samuel back into his stroller. Another wrestling match. Things weren't looking good for a peaceful gallery visit, but a McVities kept him quiet on the short walk between Picadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square.
The National Gallery is a beautiful building. I made sure that we saw Sunflowers first, and things seemed to be going along just fine. We went through four or five rooms where we saw paintings by Cezanne, Renoir, Van Gogh, Gaugin, Monet and others.
Evie's favorite paintings were Van Gogh's Farms Near Auvers and Renoir's Gladioli in a Vase. Johnny liked Rousseau's Surprised! best. I had him comparing different artists and techniques, and we were admiring the pointillism in Seurat's Bathers at Asnieres when Samuel decided he'd had quite enough of fine art, thank you very much. The screaming I could handle. It was the throwing of shoes that made me look for the exit. I could just picture us getting hauled off to Scotland Yard or wherever it is they take people who destroy priceless works of art with kid-size crocs.
So it was a nice but short visit to the National Gallery on Monday.
Tuesday we went kid-friendly again and explored the Science Museum. At the kids' request, we also headed back to the Natural History Museum (right next door) to see some things we'd missed on our first visit.
The Science Museum is heavy on the Industrial Revolution, for obvious reasons, and had lots of old steam engines and early factory machines. Here are the kids doing 007 impressions in front of the oldest surviving steam locomotive.
So this Model T isn't British, but it's cool anyway.
The kids really enjoyed the section on space exploration. I did too, but I couldn't help but notice that nearly everything in the exhibit came from the U.S. or Russia, with the exception of some German V-2s and other rockets left over from World War II. They did have the space suit of the first Briton in space, Helen Sharman, who went to the Mir space station in 1991. 1991! That's 30 years after Yuri Gagarin. I guess I'd never thought about how uninvolved most of the world has been in space exploration.
Here's Johnny checking out a first edition copy of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon.
We also saw a moon rock from one of the Apollo missions ...
... a replica of the first European satellite (note the symbolism of this photo: Johnny and Evie are satellites in erratic orbit around a fixed point that is Samuel) ...
... and this really cool floating Earth on which satellite images were projected. We saw weather patterns, ocean currents, chlorophyll levels as seasons change, electric lights at night, and airline flight tracking. This was my favorite exhibit.
Johnny and Evie liked this wall of light best. It stretched up four stories, and the moving lights seemed to interact with each other. The words you see are comments that visitors have left at the various exhibits.
Johnny and Evie have been begging to go back to the Natural History Museum, so that's what we did in the late afternoon. We entered through the Earth Hall and learned about how early myths relate to geology, astronomy and the fossil record.
The Earth's Treasures exhibit was full of useful minerals, crystals, gemstones, and these pillars of petroleum.
We passed these dodos (the birds, folks, not the kids) on the way to see more fossils.
This one's a giant sloth.
And this one is something enormous that once lived in the ocean. Johnny was very impressed.
Tuesday turned out to be a really fun day. I've learned a great lesson over the last week and a half, though. When traipsing about London, one adult and three kids is not enough adults.
The ichthyosaur ("enormous thing that once lived in the ocean") was actually discovered on the coast of England. I see there is an information plaque on Mary Anning, who discovered it. "Remarkable Creatures" by Tracy Chevalier, is about Mary and her patron/friend Miss Philpot, and their fossil discoveries. Since I read the book I have wanted to visit that beach and see what else there is to find.
ReplyDeleteIchthyosaur! I couldn't remember what it was called, but Johnny knew all about it, of course. I'll add "Remarkable Creatures" to my to-read list.
ReplyDelete