I happen to like the sounds of the city

Our original plan was to travel to London by train, but due to engineering works taking place every weekend during August this proved to be impractical. Instead we traveled by car, stopping at the motorway services for lunch along the way.  The journey was painless. There was only one short delay due to a traffic accident blocking one of the lanes. When we arrived at the hotel Mr C tried to fathom out how the car pick up and parking service worked, which wasn’t obvious. It turned out that the phone calls he had received and not been able to answer whilst we were driving were from the company trying to find out when we were going to arrive at the hotel, so that they could be there when we arrived!

When the car park parking situation had been sorted and our bags unpacked we headed off the the Science Museum which was further away than advertised to me I was flagging and in need of a cool refreshing drink when we got there…

After the welcome refreshment we picked out a few sections of the museum that we were interested in and set out to explore them.  There are many interesting things in the museum but I think that it is not laid out in the best possible way to showcase what they have on offer.  There is an excellent space section where part of the display is a full sized replica of the Apollo 11 lunar module. The museum also houses the Apollo 10 landing capsule but this is displayed in a different part of the museum. The dim lighting didn’t help to show the exhibits to their best advantage.

One of the things that I wanted to see was Foucault’s Pendulum. We struggled to find it and when we did we found it tucked away in a corner which is why is why we had missed it. We had walked past it a couple of times without noticing it.

After our brief visit we walked back to the hotel and by the time we got there my feet were complaining and I put my feet up before venturing out for dinner.  Luckily one of the restaurants I had spotted in the Dorling Kinderlsey guide book was just around the corner. The food (mostly fish) was excellent and we had a good banter and laugh with the owner who who served the guests at their tables. After the meal we called in at a pleasant pub for a nightcap before returning to the hotel.

Wikipedia states:

The Albert Memorial is situated in Kensington Gardens, London, England, directly to the north of the Royal Albert Hall. It was commissioned by Queen Victoria in memory of her beloved husband, Prince Albert who died of typhoid in 1861. The memorial was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott in the Gothic revival style. Opened in 1872, with the statue of Albert ceremonially “seated” in 1875, the memorial consists of an ornate canopy or pavilion containing a statue of Prince Albert facing south. The memorial is 176 feet tall, took over ten years to complete, and cost £120,000.

Over the years the memorial fell into disrepair and a thorough restoration program had to be carried out to get it looking how it is today.

By the late 1990s the Memorial had fallen into a state of some decay. A thorough restoration was carried out by Mowlem which included cleaning, repainting and re-gilding the entire monument as well as carrying out structural repairs. In the process the cross on top of the monument, which had been put on sideways during an earlier restoration attempt, was returned to its correct position. Some of the restoration, including repairs to damaged friezes, were of limited success.

The centrepiece of the Memorial is a seated figure of Prince Albert. Following restoration, this is now covered in gold leaf. For eighty years the statue had been covered in black paint. Various theories had existed that it was deliberately blackened during World War I to prevent it becoming a target for Zeppelin bombing raids or domestic anti-German sentiment. However, English Heritage’s research prior to the restoration suggests that the black coating pre-dates 1914 and may have been a response to atmospheric pollution that had destroyed the original gold leaf surface.

Further restoration work, including re-pointing the steps surrounding the memorial, commenced in the summer of 2006. For the duration of that work, there is no public access within the ornate surrounding fence.