I was really, really taken with the actual building itself at the Natural History Museum, even when we just saw it from the bus. It was even better up close and inside.

We came around the side on the street it shares with the Science Museum.

It's hard to see how cool the gargoyles are, but they are cool. Trust me. Various nifty species, including pterodactyls.

The ceiling has plants on it! It was so, so...so much the best of the 19th century. My very favorite bits.

We're in the background by the dinosaur here, me and Mark and Dad.

Triceratops!

Me on the upper walk thing in the dinosaur section.

Grandma with a stegosaurus.

Grandpa with triceratops. (We all had fun here, but this was the sort of place my grandpa has always loved to take me, with dinosaur bones and fun facts about animals and all. It was a very, very good thing for us to do together.)

Mark and me. Hey, did you know tyrannosaurs ate with their hind legs? (No, not really. Long story.)

Mark and Huxley.

More of the inside of the museum.

We had to rush through some of the last stuff (gigantic whale!) because they were closing early because of the bombings. We were happy to get to see any of it under those circumstances. So we went out into the nifty mirrored garden, and then over to Baden-Powell House, just down the road.

Here's my grandpa with a statue of Lord Baden Powell. As I said, Grandpa's been involved with Boy Scouting in one form or another for the last seventy years. He got to talk to some of the staff inside and look at the displays, and he was happy to have done it.

We walked back to our hotel, stopping for ice cream along the way, and ended up eating in the hotel restaurant due to lack of other options: they were closing up the hotel. We weren't sure what would be open on Friday, but we used the (exorbitantly priced) hotel internet connectivity to check in with people and to see where we could get on the Tube in the morning. And ended up having an absolutely lovely Friday.