The Victoria and Albert Museum

From the website:
"The V&A is the world’s leading museum of art and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.3 million objects that span over 5,000 years of human creativity. The Museum holds many of the UK's national collections and houses some of the greatest resources for the study of architecture, furniture, fashion, textiles, photography, sculpture, painting, jewellery, glass, ceramics, book arts, Asian art and design, theatre and performance."

Compared to the British Museum, the V&A was a much better tourist experience for us.  There were toilets on every floor, the map was more helpful, the air conditioning was colder, and it was less crowded.  The cafe had more and better food, there was seating inside as well as outside, and the outside seating was much more pleasant with a lovely reflecting pool and gardens to look at while lunching.  Plus, there was TEA and CAKE!  For more about the tea, skip to the end.

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V&A Museum

V&A architecture

Theatrical Collection

This bit was hard to find.  It was upstairs on the 3rd floor in the back corner behind the silver gallery.  It's four rooms worth of theatrical costumes, theatre models, set models, masks, hats, shoes, and prints that includes not only theatre, but ballet, opera, and rock and roll.  It's an amazing collection.  Notable costumes are Elfelba from Wicked, which we got to see in Edinburgh, two costumes from Lion King, which I still haven't seen.  Of personal interest to me (because I've done these shows)  The Queen of the Night from Magic Flute, Jocelyn Herbert's masks from The Orestia, (my mask making project from many summers ago was based on her designs), and Maria from Daughter of the Regiment.  Unfortunately for all of us, the V&A has yet to put out a book of the collection, so my poor photos will have to do.

Fashion collection

When you get done looking at my poor photos, you can go online and order the book of the collection.  It'll cost you about $10.00 that's actually in dollars not pounds.  I bought the book from the gift shop and it cost me $25 USD.  I should have known better.

The REst of the Collection

We began our walk through the collection with Medieval and Renaissance Europe and it just kept going and going and going.

The Map

About to take the tube for the first time by ourselves. Excited and nervous.

We took the Picadilly line from Covent Garden to South Kensington Station.  That took about 20 minutes and then we walked a few blocks to the museum.  It was easy.  We had lunch in the V&A cafe which is the world's oldest museum cafe.  At 4:00 we went back for tea and cake or death in the loveliest tea room ever.  Dinner was at an "American" hamburger joint that had the best flavored meat we had the whole trip and they served it with rosemary chips (fries).  Best meal of the trip so far.  When it was time to leave, we took the tube back to Covent Garden and then walked down to the Dominion for Bat out of Hell!

The Tea Room