BoofleBlog

First stop: The Museum of Childhood. This place is excellent. I’m not sure I have words for how excellently excellent it is. It’s a museum of mostly toys and games. The toys are divided up by power source: steam powered toys and light based toys and electric toys and gravity/falling toys. Many of the exhibits seem like they haven’t been updated (the electric toys include stuff from the early 80s but not much that’s more recent), but, at least for the older toys, they’re splendid. They have a puppet exhibit and lots of board and card games. They have a people sized checkerboard and lots of tables with inlaid games. Upstairs are dollhouses (Did you know that a dollhouse was supposed to teach a young girl how to run a household? I didn’t.), children’s clothes through the years (including a bong — there was an explanation, but it made little sense), and an exhibit on child labor (because that’s part of childhood too). I don’t remember what the requested donation was, but I’m sure I gave them more.

Next stop: The Museum of London. This isn’t just a typo of the British Museum — it’s actually a museum devoted to the history of the town that’s been in the curve of the Thames for over 5000 years. I loved the prehistoric stuff — who knew that there were once rhinos in England. The museum does really well up through the Romans, but the medieval stuff is being renovated, and it’s just too big a jump from Roman tiles to Stuart bedrooms. Without the bit in between, it doesn’t flow well at all. There’s a movie of the Great Fire, and a computer exhibit of the Victorian era, but I sort of lost interest when I skipped over 1500 years. This is a museum that starts off telling me a story and ends up just showing me pretty pictures. I’m not a pretty pictures person.

Onward to: St. Paul’s Cathedral. I strolled around the outside and was shocked (shocked!) to see people sunbathing on the grounds. I’m certainly not a religious sort, but that seemed a little disrespectful to me. Inside, there was a service going on — it’s easy to forget that these classic churches which are such popular tourist stops are also functioning Anglican churches. I was a little surprised to find a service happening at 3:30, but there we were. Not much opportunity for touristing around, so I just listened to the sermon. It was a woman vicar (at St. Paul’s — I was stunned) and the lesson was quite reasonable: you don’t have time for God when you’re rushing from place to place so just Slow Down. I went downstairs and had a quick afternoon nosh (tea, I suppose) at the Crypt Cafe. Why, oh why didn’t they have t-shirts? I would have bought one in a heartbeat.

Back to Richmond. Back to the pub. Back to the house.

– Day 5 –