So much for keeping up to date with the travel blogs! Although you can probably guess from the name of this entry just why I crashed as soon as I got back to the hotel. I dare say I was a bit optimistic in my plans for today (well, yesterday technically) but it worked out alright in the end. 

My first stop, though, was Paddington station, just around the corner from my hotel. For most of this trip, other than the flight from Inverness to Amsterdam, I’m travelling by train, and I decided to get a Eurail pass as it worked out cheaper in the end. The way that this works is that I can choose 5 days out of a month, and get unlimited train travel on that day, which works out great for long distance travel. The savings over booking each trip individually also meant that I could justify getting a first class one, just to make the long trips a bit more comfortable. The downside to this is that it doesn’t actually guarantee me a seat, so I headed to Paddington to make some seat reservations. Luckily, even though none of the trains were actually leaving from that station, the staff there were able to sort it out for me, so now I have my seat reservations for the London to Chester train on Sunday, and the Chester to Inverness one (and that is a long trip) next Thursday. 

Once that was done I headed for St Pancras station on the tube, mainly to take some photos of the amazing train hall there (and to a lesser extent the one next door at Kings Cross) but mainly because it was close to the British Library, which was my first stop for the day. Incidentally, I’m counting it as one of the 6 museums, as I was there to visit the Treasures gallery, which is basically a museum for books! They have on display such things as: 

• An early 15th century Italian illustrated book of herbs,
• A Gutenberg Bible, the first large scale book printed in Europe around 1454,
• An amazingly detailed Spanish manuscript illustrating part of the Book of Revelation, made in the 11th Century,
•  A copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio from 1623, 
• And a copy of the Magna Carta from 1215. 
• Among many, many others

It’s a fantastic collection, and even better for being free to get into (as are most museums in London!) 

After the British Library it was off to the British Museum, which contains something like 8 million objects from around the world, and is the sort of place that I could spend entire days in (and have, in the past!). This time it was more of a quick refresh of the highlights (the Rosetta stone, some of the Lewis Chessmen, massive statues from Ancient Egypt etc). 

Not too far from the British Museum is the Petrie Museum of Egyption Archeology, part of University College London, and a small but fascinating collection. Well, small compared to the British Museum anyway, they still have about 80,000 objects, only 10% of which are on show. A couple of highlights include one of the earliest known examples of Egyptian linen from about 5000 BC (yep, a 7000 year old piece of cloth!), a beaded dress, a small model of a boat, believed to be the only one of it’s kind in the world and countless pieces of pottery, jewellery and such. It’s a fascinating collection and well worth the visit, even if it is a bit hard to find! 

Around the corner from the Petrie Museum is another of UCL’s museums, the Grant Museum of Zoology, containing a vast array of zoological specimens including a preserved Thylacine (Tasmanian Tiger) and animal bones galore. 

After that I wondered down towards Covent Garden to the London Film Museum and London Transport Museum. The Film Museum is a long running exhibition of the vehicles and props used in the James Bond films, which was amazing to see (if you’re a fan of the films anyway, if not, it probably won’t mean much!). 

And finally the London Transport Museum, chronicling the changing face of transport in the city, from riverboats on the Thames to the development of the world’s first underground railway, and the modernisation of that railway into what is now the Tube, as well as the change from horse drawn carriages to the iconic red double decker London buses. 

By this point I was pretty much exhausted, so I stopped at a Pizza Express restaurant nearby for dinner and dessert (a very nice Tiramisu) and then caught the Tube back to the hotel, where, as previously mentioned, I crashed almost straight away. 

EDIT: 05/09/19 @ 10:09PM. Photos have now been added!