I don't think that's... (ahem!)... "history." (PG-13)

 We promised the girls at the start of this trip we would stop and ride any carousel we come across.  We'd seen this one on our first visit to the Natural History Museum in London back in October, but didn't have time to stop right then.  And then on the next visit it was a Sunday after church.  And then the next visit it wasn't open.  So this time we made a special excursion back, mainly just to ride the carousel.  What we didn't know was that it was a FAST carousel that spun so quickly we were almost thrown off, adding greatly the excitement (and making it difficult to get a photo where we aren't a crazy blur).  H sat this one out, and manned the camera.

All the public museums in London have free admission, which we think is astonishingly wonderful.  There are many things about Big Government we don't care for, but free admission to museums and galleries isn't one of them!  This is the entrance atrium, and the museum itself spreads out in all directions from here.  "Dippy" the brontosaurus skeleton is a local celebrity.

The other end of the atrium, with a lovely reproduction "Bridge of Sighs" spanning the entrance.

This is what I'm talking about re: the title of this post.  In the "Human Biology" section we stumbled upon this rather realistic life-size cutaway diorama (it's not an illustration, it actually is in 3-D).  Now Catherine has had "the talk" and wasn't all that surprised.  Totally embarrassed?  Absolutely.  But not surprised.  Elinor, on the other hand....  Well, we just turned her around and said, "Oh look over here, Elinor!  More dinosaurs!"  I guess it's "history" in the sense of it being the way we all got here (except IVF babies), but totally NOT what we were expecting at the museum.    

 The life-size blue whale model is rather impressive.  And rather large.

The girls want to try ice-skating while we're here, and there are any number of temporary rinks set up in lovely, historic locales (including the Natural History Museum, Hampton Court, Somerset House, Hyde Park, etc.)  Their enthusiasm was only slightly dampened by seeing people fall on the ice.  Last time I skated, about twenty years ago, I could stay up just fine, but I don't like skating.  It's a futile exercise that, at best, makes you cold and sore.

 On the Tube back to the flat, I was lucky to snap this pic.  It kind of sums up C's and E's relationship.  They're holding hands, but one of them is attacking the other at the same time.