Museum Town

Is there a better place in the world to tour Museums than London? Paris, without doubt, has some of the top Museum's in the world with the Lourve, The Musee d'Orsay, the Petit Palais and dozens of others (although I don't really consider Versailles to be Parisian even though many list it among the top Museums of Paris). New York has The Met, The Guggenheim and the American Museum of Natural History among it's most famous. Amsterdam, Barcelona, Florence, Washington DC, Berlin, Rome and St Petersburg all have dozens of great museums as well. But for my money, both literally and figuratively, London has the best assortment of great museums that are every bit as good as the greats from other cities and are also frequently free to visit!

With limited time and two kids under six we had to restrict our museum selection to what we thought the girls could handle over a couple hours and that we were familiar enough with to be able to pivot and change plans on the fly.

The National Gallery is probably surprisingly good on this front because it's very large and generally has a lot of people visiting so we don't have to be terribly concerned about being overly noisy. It also has a several of my favorite painters and works of art (Van Gogh, Rubens and Willem Kalf).

But what Charlotte found most interesting were the gilded rood screens. And not just because they were gilded. I was sooo proud!

After almost 2 hours of wandering everyone was about ready for a snack and it just so happens that the National Gallery offers one of the most pleasant tea services we've found in London. And while we generally splurged for a reservation at Ochre a decade ago the tea and scones taste just as good in Muriel's Kitchen just inside the Getty exit. Plus it's closer to a buffet style which made ordering extra cookies and cakes for the girls just a little easier.

All told the first big Museum was a success so we decided to push our luck with the next major museum on our list. The Victoria and Albert!

The V&A is maybe the most underrated museum in all of London. It doesn't have many paintings like the National Gallery or Portrait Gallery, and it lacks some of the big ticket items that you can see at the British Museum, like the Rosetta Stone. But it more than makes up for it in terms of it's eclectic variety of cultural artifacts from all over the world and sheer scale.

During our visit we took the girls through the Asian exhibit, the Jewelry Collection past the dresses, and finally into the always impressive Collection of Casts.

See you this summer Dave!

Charlotte LOVED the jewelry but outside of that was really just ready to find a park or playground to run around in for a bit. So after the cast collection we made our way on to other adventures for the day.

The next day, while Olivia was getting a much needed rest, Charlotte and Amanda ventured over to the Tate Modern to see if Charlotte had any interest in more modern art forms. And perhaps not surprisingly she struggled to find interest in the more abstract concepts and art work on display at the Tate. For some people Modern Art just speaks to them. Apparently for the Powell family, it chooses to remain silent.

On our last full day in London we managed to get Olivia down for another nap so I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and visit the Imperial War Museum. Shortly after we moved to London in March of 2013 the Imperial War Museum was closed as they prepared a full remodel to inaugurate 100 years since the opening of hostilities of "The Great War". When they first closed the Museum I was hopeful that it would re-open early in 2014 so that I could visit it prior to moving back to the US in June, but the opening date was ultimately pushed to late summer to coincide more closely with the start of the conflict and as such I haven't been able to visit since we lived in Bristol more than a decade despite living a 30 minute tube ride away for 16 months. Needless to say I was ready to get back and see what new exhibits were on offer. Also I was getting the opportunity to visit alone which is a rare treat in and of itself.

Virtually everything about the Museum has changed since my last visit and while the scale of the WWI exhibit was significantly paired back from what it had been in 2014-2018 (one of the tour guides mentioned the exhibit covered multiple floors during that period) there were still a number of interesting stories and displays.

The WWII exhibit was quite a bit smaller but still very interesting.

But my favorite new thing to see was the War Game Exhibit where they showed growth in interest and importance of war games throughout the modern age. They even had Nintendo's Top Gun available to play!

I finished my afternoon at IWM after 3 hours having made it through 2/3 of the exhibits but it was time for dinner and a welcome rest on the tube journey to meet the rest of the family.