The Top Floor Flat

I am just a few hours away from the one week marker for my return to the UK.  Aside from a string of particularly sleepy evenings, the jet lag really hasn’t affected me too badly and I’m starting to feel like I’m back in the swing of things, and certainly not like I’ve been away for ten weeks!

In order to further facilitate my acquaintance with the city of London, however, I decided to take advantage of the uncharacteristically good weather and walk the 3 miles or so to Exhibition Road in South Kensington.  This area is home to some of London’s, in fact the world’s, most impressive museums including the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.  It was warm enough that I was perfectly comfortable in a long-sleeved tee-shirt and vest but when I got there I realised I hadn’t really decided which museum I wanted to explore today.  Finally, after weighing my options (the V&A has my favourite exhibits, the Natural History is my favourite building and I hadn’t been in the Science before) I decided to try something new and check out the Science Museum which is currently hosting a number of temporary exhibitions I’d heard good things about.

I had forgotten how crowded the area could get on a Saturday and while it was nothing compared to how overrun the place will be in the summer months, I definitely had to do my fair share of child-dodging.  Fortunately, the exhibitions that most interested me didn’t seem to be the main destination for the family groups so I quickly found myself in some of the more deserted parts of the museum.  I first made my way to the Future Foods exhibit which described highlights of the debate regarding genetically modified (GM) food.  Nothing particularly new or noteworthy but there was a virtual interactive bit where I got to pick and choose genes with which to genetically modify a tomato, including one from a blueberry to turn my tomato blue.

Next, I headed upstairs to the special exhibit Dan Dare and the Birth of High Tech Britain.  Dan Dare was a newspaper comic character born at the end of the second world war that flew around the planets in his spaceship, making use of such modern marvels as penicillin, nuclear energy, and lead-lined refrigerators.  The Dan Dare part of the exhibition was really a frame for a look at the technologies that Britain developed immediately following WWII but overall I thought it was a really fun and informative set up.

Finally, I made my way to the top floors of the museum to explore the permenate exhibits on loan from the Wellcome Collection, a museum a few miles away inspired by pharmacist, entrepreneur, philanthropist and collector, Sir Henry Wellcome, that reflects his vision to create a space where people could come to learn more about the development of medicine.  At the Science Museum, the entire history of medicine is laid out in chronological order with implements, artistic renderings and information about each period.  The whole thing was absolutely filled with fun and interesting facts.  Think of your barber.  Have a good picture in mind? Now imagine them doing any of your necessary surgical procedures as well.  Until the 18th century, physicians were much more highly regarded than surgeons, who often were only minimally trained and doubled as barbers.

In addition to the history of medicine, the Wellcome Collection donations also included several miniature and life-size replicas of various medicine-related scenes (some more gruesome than others).  From an ancient citizen suffering eye surgery while tied to a chair to ease the surgeon’s job, to the poor conditions of amputation in the WWI trenches to modern day open heart surgery, it was a very impressive setup.

After my afternoon at the museum, I made my way back to my neighbourhood of Olympia and for the first time, spent some time exploring the streets around my own.  Imagine my shock when I discovered, not two blocks away, a local park (complete with public tennis courts), a giant supermarket, half a dozen cute restaurants and pubs, a Catholic church and a girl’s school as well as countless other shops and cafes! I’m definitely going to need to spend more time exploring the area around the Top Floor Flat in the coming weeks but in the meantime, I think the jetlag is starting to kick back in, so unless I get a second wind and head out for a screening of Watchmen at the nearby movie theatre, tonight is going to be another low key, London night.