Our European Adventure

Day 22: Tuesday

We spent the day exploring the Natural History Museum. Checked out all the mammals and dinosaurs. To be honest, I could have stayed all day, but it was a bit much for saphira.

Just outside the natural history museum was an open-air ice rink! How awesome! We were freezing our butts off so bad, and I thought mel would chicken out, but all three of us strapped on our skates and went flailing across the ice! It might have been romantic with the fairy lights and music, and the elegant figures of dancing skaters, but alas. Captain Klutz had shown up with his girlfriend, and every five seconds he seemed to be flying towards one of us, completely out of control and unable to stop! We had to duck and weave, which, if you can imagine a white whale on ice skates, isn’t that easy.

Saphira has never ice skated before, and her technique is a little hard to describe. It’s kind of like running, or marching, but funnier. She goes for speed, rather than style, and constantly has a panicked look on her face. Okay, we all had that look on our faces with the Captain so close, but there was a definite sense of freaked-outness about her that was pretty funny.

At one stage, Saffi and I totally stacked it and went sliding on the ice. I can’t even tell you how it happened, but I can tell you it hurt! Saffi had the biggest bruise on her bum! After that, she really wanted to get off and never skate again, but we forced her to keep going and by the end of the night she was gushing about what a great time she had and how awesome she is at ice skating. Hmmm.

Poor Mel was left alone the whole time because she was so focused on not falling down that she didn’t want to hang out with us (plus I don’t know if she could keep up with saphira’s super speed). I had saphira practically hanging from my right arm the entire time (despite trying my best to encourage her to branch out on her own!) By about halfway through Mel was having a better time, still with the main goal of not falling down. She seemed to be a magnet for crap skaters, and was constantly being smashed by out of control kids (not forgetting the Captain) and almost stacking it. On reflection, she thinks that she had a good time. I think.

Day 23: Wed

Back for round two at the natural history museum! Actually, it was way better than the first day because we got to go inside “the cocoon”. It’s pretty cool, with interactive stuff for kids and heaps of gross creepy crawlies. You got to spy on real biologists doing experiments and the only downside was the school groups. Oh, yuck. Can’t even count the number of times we both almost started organising this bunch of rowdy kids. Not exactly helping us get excited about going back to work.

We spent the evening in Soho, and made the fatal mistake of trying to find a hairdresser. Returned with the worst haircuts the world has ever seen, and I refuse to write any more about it, because I’m in public right now, and could end up in tears just thinking about that awful night.