One last day
It’s always difficult travelling home on an evening flight. Having packed up ready to leave and checked out of the hotel, an empty day remains, and such days are not to be wasted!
It was a cold, sparkly sort of a morning with a clear sky.
A quick check of the temperature reassured us that once the sun rose a little, it would warm up a bit. A bit!
Our strategies for such days include identifying a clear destination and this time, we chose the Museum of Science and Industry. I could not recall going there previously and though my Hero said he remembered it well I was convinced he was thinking of a different place.
“It was incredibly noisy” he said, “full of children”. But I still could not bring it to mind.
Anyway, we got there at opening time having bought our tickets online. Whatever made us think that getting there early might allow us to have the place to ourselves a while?
Centre stage was the most enormous Christmas tree and around it was a collection of smaller trees, each decorated for a different country.
Beneath each tree was a short description of Christmas in that country and the tree itself was decorated…well, to begin with, I thought it was “in the style of” that country.
I thought of my Danish friend Marianne and how one year we made some very elaborate paper hearts.
The trouble came when we reached countries that we knew a bit about…
Tea cups and pictures of the Royal Family? Recipes? (including one for Welsh Cakes, which surely belonged on the Welsh tree?) My Hero told me not to take these things so literally! But I felt that there was a missed opportunity here and remembering the marvellous exhibit on the same theme in Pittsburgh a couple of years ago, there really was no comparison. Hmmm, and surely some of the countries included would not traditionally celebrate Christmas at all?
Thankfully, just around the corner was a distraction. Not only was there the most enormous and incredibly detailed model railway layout, but a large jet aircraft hung above it. Of course, I remembered this museum now!
We had purchased tickets with a timed entry to the Lego exhibition too, being in a Lego frame of mind right now (Titanic!)
There were some clever concepts here, including a series of endangered species, built life size and depicted in their natural habitat in adjacent photographs.
Yes, those are the same Lego polar bears standing on that ice floe in the photo above. How did the artist do it? Photoshop? Or?
The grand finale of the exhibit was the Twelve Days of Christmas built in Lego. We smiled to hear the chap nearby wonder where the Audi fitted in….
We headed to the airport in the late afternoon, loving this last look at the city as we went. We returned our rental car in the new facility - so convenient and much improved - and caught the shuttle train to Terminal 5 where the train stopped right by the door nearest the British Airways counter. How neat was that?
It was a grand few days! Our flight was late leaving but comfortable seats in the new BA “suite” on an A350 Airbus, for the short 7 hour flight home, where I’m pleased to say it’s still Autumn.
