Dead and buried

Ladies and Gentleman! May I present to you... dead things in London! And some other curiosities as well. We spent one day in London visiting different museums and I definitely loved that! Even as a child I always wanted to go to the Finnish Natural History Museum whenever we were in Helsinki. The two-headed calf was my absolute favorite. ;) The museums in London were free too, so if you ever visit London I suggest you skip the Tussaud's and the Tower, save your money for food/drink and shopping and go see the London's finest dead and buried!

Anyway, I took a shitload of pictures but in most of them there's some kid photobombing the image since apparently people of London considered us a curiosity as well... ù_ú; Oh well, I'll post some (way too many still...) anyway, starting from the Science Museum.

We stopped by the Science Museum just really quickly, but it was full of wonders and you could easily spent half a day there. The lighting was poor though and my crappy camera said no can do so only a few pictures from there.

Next stop was Natural History Museum, which was right next to the Science Museum. It was really cool except for the fact that the area containing taxidermy was full of kids running around, pulling your clothes, photobombing pictures and their parents asking if they could take pictures with us... so pretty exhausting, though the animals were amazingly cute!

I had never seen a dodo before I think, so adorable things! Also, the dinosaurs and other prehistorical creatures blow your mind with their size and all! No wonder Jurassic Park used to be one of my favorite movies as a child!

Imagine my face when I found a container filled with bats! Some of them were huge! Pure love. <3

My favorite thing in the whole museum however was the "jar department". All kinds of things preserved in glass jars. Just look at them! Mr. Wolf was quite dumbstruck when I was running around squealing happily and taking pictures. :D He doesn't really share my enthusiasm in this... xD

By the end of the tour we were quite tired already but I took a couple of more pictures. Then we went to get drinks in some pub and continued to our final destination, the British Museum.

The British Museum is wonderful even as just a building. It really takes your breath away, I can assure you. And you could easily spend the whole day there. We didn't have that much time so we went for the things that interested us the most: the mummies and other historical relics.

It still amazes me how well a human body can be preserved if the conditions are right. I swear some of those mummies could have just been very thin people sleeping...

I had never seen a mummified cat before! The position is very odd... so human-like. o_o

Even though I loved the mummies best the museum is packed with relics, such as swords, jewellery and art. I highly recommend this place for basically anyone, but especially those interested in history of humans.

The rest of our vacation consisted of eating, drinking and shopping. :3 Unfortunately, I still haven't got pictures of the stuff we bought... I'll try to ask Wolf if he has time to take some tomorrow but we'll see, since time is very limited due to the short period of sunlight... :< Anyway, I hope these previous posts have inspired some of you to visit this wondrous city!

Cemetery Polka

So much for more frequent blogging, eh? :D But as promised, pictures and ramblings about our trip to Highgate Cemetery. <3

Highgate is one of the oldest burial grounds in London. It is a beautiful, forest-like, well, actually quite overgrown place filled with beautiful graves old and new. Some of the residents are quite famous. We were there only a little while and  came across with Douglas Adams and Karl Marx. I would really like to spent an entire day in there, roaming, photographing and enjoying the scenery. After all the entrance fee was only like three or four ponds for adults. :)

But yeah, promised you some pictures so here goes!

The whole Highgate area is filler with churches, mansions and beautiful architecture.

Here is the grave of Douglas Adams. I don't know what is this pen jar thing but it probably has something to do with his career as a writer. Like, in place of flowers people bring pens?

Many graves had statues that related to the profession of the departed.

This black and red Celtic cross was on of the most beautiful that we found!

We have absolutely no idea what was this chair doing in there! Maybe it is marking a grave of some grandfather or maybe it it a place for some grandfather to sit and spent time with some late grandmother? Anyway, super creepy... o_o

Besides the gravestones I do love the vegetation over there! The beautiful plants creeping over ancient gravestones and enormous trees looming over them... so stunning. <3

Highgate as an area was filled with mansions with huge premises with barbed wire and electric fences with signs like: "No trespassing!". People there seem to be enormously rich and very, very private.

After our way too short trip to Highgate we went to see some of the museums in London! So next entry will probably be about those. I do hope that I'll have time to do it tomorrow already but it might as well be weeks... again. :D