Shiny!

(PHOTO: JAJA 1985)
I’ve spoken here before about my love of science centres, but given the choice between a science centre or a natural history museum, the latter usually wins by a hair. They’re usually in gorgeous, old buildings, in central locations of beautiful cities, they have the whiff of academia and history and mad professors about them, and they often have a huge dinosaur skeleton in their front hall. Frankly, what’s not to love.

However, one of my favourite parts of these museums are the halls of gems, minerals, meteorites etc etc. Sure, I enjoy the dinosaurs, a diorama is always entertaining, the gift shop is always worth a few minutes, I do like a full size model of a blue whale, but I can’t seem to leave a museum without visiting the sparkly things. Harvard Museum of Natural History? Check. American Museum of Natural History in New York? Check. I should mention that the gallery of intricate glass flowers in the Harvard museum is definitely worth a visit, but the hall o gems was totally the highlight. All those colourful stones, dramatic crystals, rocks, baubles, I can’t help it, I must have been a magpie in a former life.

Anyway, I had a point. The Natural History Museum of London, and I may be biased here, is a particularly lovely building. This time of year especially, as there’s an ice rink parked out front. I had it on my to-do list anyway thanks to the ice rink, but now oh joy I discover that they have a new gallery called The Vault, which features amongst others, a cursed amethyst, a hefty gold nugget, a Martian meteorite, a pink beryl and 296 coloured diamonds. As well as being super rare and beautiful, The Vault is also quite exclusive, only opening after hours on the last Friday each month until next April. And guess what. This Friday is the last of the month. So guess where I’ll be on Friday night…

PS Lovely gem pictures on Flickr.