The Museum of London explains the history of London for those of us who aren't that in to history

Alternate title: "The Museum of London: a museum so nice I've been there twice (in the last week!)."

As prompted by this article of 101 Free Things to Do in London, I stopped by the Museum of London last week and was thoroughly impressed by how in-depth its displays are. I couldn't wait to get back.

That day I only had about an hour to spend perusing, and I made it through half of the first floor, which is roughly through to the Bronze and Iron ages (right around the turn of BC to AD, even though no one knew that at the time). The Romans hadn't even invaded yet!

These are axe handles, but to me the look like bike seats. So naturally, I took a photo.

And as a special treat (or perhaps a daily occurrence? It was there again today!) there was a table staffed by volunteer experts. I held an oil-pot that was 2,000 years old! It was made 2,000 years ago, sat in the ground for 1,980 years, and then it somehow found itself in my grubby little hand. Too. cool. (They also had a copper ring, complete with ring finger bone, on display. I did *not* hold that.)

Today I found myself in the area again, and with a lot more time on my hands. Starting where I left off, I meandered my way through history. I'm admittedly terrible with dates and history, but this museum really worked for me. I could easily follow where I was in time, and since the location didn't change I found myself filling in several gaps in my mental timeline of world and European history.

For example, I learned...

• after the Roman occupation the area around London (Londinium) was abandoned and fell into ruin. 
• The plague killed one in five people in London, and the remaining people tried to fend off germs with "nice smells" like lavender, since they thought the disease was carried by "bad smells."
• There was a British civil war. 
• The country ousted the monarchy for ten years in the late 1500s. Then they brought it back. 
• The fire of 1666 was devastating. And huge. And burned for five days. Can you even imagine?!
• Also, WWI and WWII were Much Bigger Deals in the UK. The longer I'm here, and travelling within Europe, the more I'm sure that will really set in. 

Along with the history, there are several interactive displays, making the museum excellent for families with kids. You can literally touch, listen, watch, even smell certain parts of history. (The smell is just the lavender, nothing gross!) The movies are good lengths, and don't require very much concentration to follow (one is just clips from the 1920s-40s with music and captions). There are also mini scavenger hunts and some computer games with kid-friendly narrators. 

As I learn more about London, I bet I'll find myself returning to different rooms at the Museum of London, because each room has so much information to take in. Wandering through took at least three hours (for me, that was over two visits), and after a while I wasn't reading much, just scanning headlines and skimming paragraphs that piqued my interest. 

It definitely helped me appreciate more of the history of my adopted city, and I'd recommend it for adults and kids alike! 

Big, plastic boards with items to find around the prehistoric exhibit.

Looped video on the wall in the first exhibit:

Computers with more information:

Comic book-esque history of the Romans in London:

Recreation of housing in the 800s (fully explorable)

"The first map of London"

This cascade of TV screens alternated between synchronized video / text

Rome Day 3: Audio tours FTW

Today was full of ancient ruins! The Colosseum and Roman Forum are central to Rome's ancient history, and they're mighty impressive to look at. But even though I was here in 2012 and saw both I didn't take a tour, and of course I didn't look up any information before this trip because that would have been sensible.

Enter: The Rick Steves Audio Tours. If you've traveled much, you know the name Rick Steves. If you're like me and grew up on a television diet of PBS, you know him from the Saturday afternoon lineup (probably right after Bob Ross). He's a be-khakied, be-polo-shirted Very Nice Dude who has traveled the world and he brings it to your living room in soft-spoken, digestible 30-minute nuggets. It's delightful! And today we learned, he has an app for Europe. Day = enriched.

All four of us were able to download audio tours of the Colosseum and Roman Forum, then plug in our ear buds and meander on our own through the buildings and ruins. It worked really well for our group. We kind of stayed together without having to stay together or talk to each other. Plus we were still able to talk about what we learned afterwards. Each tour took about an hour start-to-finish, so if you play your cards right — or skip the line by buying your tickets ahead of time (this link is not an endorsement!) — you could easily get to both of these sights before noon. We took a bit longer than that, but we also didn't have a whole heckuva lot else to do today, so we definitely meandered more than we might have if today were our first day.

 

We also ate some delicious pizza, fried anchovies (surprisingly delicious!), perfect pasta, and of course MOAR GELATO. Because when you're in Rome, the food is as much of an attraction as anything else.

For those of you keeping track at home, today makes three gelatos in three days. Batting 1.000! I've tried lemongrass, pear and cheese, strawberry, giuliano chocolate (traditional Italian flavor), and "black passion" which was mega chocolate plus berries. OM NOM NOM.