Our first activity on Wednesday was to walk the few blocks from our hotel to the Natural History Museum. It is a very impressive building, but that is just about where my enthusiam ends.
Although this is supposedly one of the "TopTen" places to visit in London, it is certainly nothing compared to the Natural History Museum in New York. It was the large quantities of dust found all though the large mammal exhibit which turned us off the most.
The Blue Whale had dust bunnies all around the top of its mouth. Very sad. As if being on the endangered animal list isn't enough!
In all, I think we spent 45 minutes to an hour here before deciding it was time to shake the dust from our feet and move on to something completely different.
After the Natural History Museum, Keith and I headed to the Chelsea Football Club's home stadium for a tour (2 for 1 paying off again!). I asked him to write about all the soccer related photos:
Stamford Bridge Stadium, Chelsea, West London
The home team dressing room at Stamford Bridge.
The pitch at the stadium. The large rolling lights are to keep the grass green throughout the many cloudy London days.
We took a tour of Stamford Bridge, home stadium for Chelsea FC of the Premier League. Our tour guide was great and extremely funny, taking shots constantly at anyone who wasn't a Chelsea fan. We began by going to the media centre which is decked out for journalists to set up laptops, watch the game when its cold, and have all the free drinks from the open bar. Team philosophy is that a drunk journalist will most likely give you a better review in the papers.
After this we were taken to the visitors' dressing room. This was nothing to write home about with bare walls, a few hard massage tables, and hard benches along the walls. They have also put the whiteboard for writing down plays in such a spot that they have to keep the door open to discuss them. Our guide told us that there is a competition in the Premier League for who can have the worst, most oppressive visitor dressing room in the league.
In contrast, the home dressing room is quite nice with safes for valuables, carpeted floors, nice showers and a other equipment for relaxing after the game. We were surprised however that it came no where near the Edmonton Oilers' new dressing room for fancy.
We then were divided into Chelsea fans and other fans and told to line up. We ran up the tunnel out onto the edge of the pitch taking pictures of the vast empty stadium. In the upper east end is a large box not for press, but rather for security. Mirrored glass hides a large team of security personel who can videotape/photograph every person in every seat of the stadium as well as listen in to all conversations. In this way, the Premier League has taken huge steps in calming football violence throughout England. It's way safer to see a game in England than in Holland.
At the end of the tour, Jenn and I returned to the museum which gives the history of Chelsea FC since 1908. It was an extremely great tour, and I say that in all sincerity. Even Jenn enjoyed it.
On Monday, we had purchased tickets for the relatively new musical "Wicked" which had come highly recommended to us. We were in the orchestra stalls section, just enough to the left to make our tickets 30 pounds instead of 60. It was worth every pence and then some. If you ever get a chance, go see it. It is the "untold story of the witches of Oz" and recounts the days back when Glinda (the "good witch") was roomates with Elphaba (to be known in infamy as the "wicked witch of the West") back in boarding school. It had a great message, fantastic music, AND they sold little pots of ice cream at the intermission. What more could you ask for?
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