This day was going to be my very first day in London! Needless to say, I was pretty excited, so my friends and I set out slightly earlier (around 10-ish) than usual. The Thameslink train line in our local railway station connects us to King’s Cross in about 20 minutes, which is extremely convenient.

King’s Cross station was so large and almost overwhelming, with people hurrying in all directions, scattering about with their luggage. There were public pianos with people playing, cafes and let’s not forget the ever so famous platform 9 and 3/4s. I would have taken a photo, but the line was way too long (at least an hour). Maybe it would get shorter when we come back at night?

We headed over to the museum. Can I just say, I had never seen such a grand looking museum in my life (Well, technically I’ve been to the Louvre, but I think that’s more impressive on the inside than the outside). The Natural History museum looked like a straight up palace, and stands in stark contrast to our little National Museum back in Singapore. I turned to my friends and asked “Are we actually going to be able to cover this in one day?”

The first thing you see when you step in is this giant whale skeleton! From there, it’s a maze of sections to explore. Like all other public museums in the UK, entrance is free, but this museum gives you more than enough reasons to want to donate, or at least buy something from their gift shop.

The museum is divided into different zones, and oh boy is each zone filled to the brim. We started from the green zone, where there were fossils of marine reptiles! This is the stuff of nightmares, they’re huge with big teeth and used to lurk in our oceans.

This area links us to the creepy crawlies & birds sections. The taxidermy specimens are all historic specimens and really cool, there’s even a KAKAPO! (If you don’t know what that is, do yourself a favour and watch this video)

We then moved to the Blue zone, where the Human Biology and mammals sections were. As a biology major, the human biology section contained information that wasn’t particularly new to me, so I skimmed past and went to the taxidermy mammal specimens directly. These specimens were noticeably fading in colour, because they are so old, but the museum holds them with great value and no longer aims to collect animals for specimens the way it once did, which I totally respect.

Next was the mammals Hall, and this was one of my favourite parts of the museum. You always think marine mammals being big, but you never fully grasp just how big that big is until you see it. There were many other mammals showcased here as well.

We then saw the Images of Nature section, where there was a ton of scientific sketching, many of them from landmark voyages including those of James Cook. Scientific sketching in general in so beautiful, its really sad that it has been lost now that photographs are the norm.

Next was the dinosaur section with fossils and skeletons galore! It really makes you wonder how life was once like on earth.

Next was the treasures room. The treasures room was absolutely surreal, with the Darwin collection and other of the museum’s most prized possessions. I’ve always joked with my sister that I’m Darwin’s reincarnation (for no other reason than we share the same birthday and I think he’s really cool lol), so seeing the first edition of The Origin of Species was an out of body experience.

We ended our day in the Rocks & Minerals section. We were already getting hungry and the museum was closing soon anyway, so we left to find something to eat. We saw a place with Spanish Tapas, so we thought, why not!

We asked the waitress what she recommended, to which she pointed to something on the menu (it was in Spanish) and said, “I like prawns!” Well, I like prawns too, so I ordered it thinking it would be a prawn dish of some sort (It was 9 POUNDS). She asked if I wanted bread, which I thought was odd and declined. She then brought me my dish of literally just 5 prawns. FOR 9 POUNDS! I can have an entire noodle dish with 5 prawns for the equivalent of 2 pounds back in Singapore. I was so disappointed but I resigned to my fate and ordered the bread. This was probably the stupidest meal I’ve had thus far.

But other than that, I still enjoyed my day. Also, 9 and 3/4 was not less crowded at night, so here’s a creep shot instead.