Our last day in london was supposed to be only a half-day as we were aiming to catch a 15:00 train back to Newcastle. Our train tickets had a condition on them that prevented us from catching a train between 15:30 and 19:00 -- most likely to keep the rush hour as relaxed as possible.

A picture of the Arabian Proverb

We spent the morning visiting Andy (and Tamsin) at the Science Museum in Kensington, where they work. Andy gave us a whistle-stop tour of the museum in his lunch hour, but you would need to devote several days to see everything that it has to offer. Highlights include a full-scale production of Charles Babbage's difference engine as well as smaller replicas of his other inventions (although no sign of the "cow pusher" that he reportely is responsible for). The musum has also managed to acquire the Apollo 10 lunar module and, most bizarrely, Charles Babbage's brain.

Kate,

hacking in the British Library

Right next to the science museum are the natural history and V&A museums. Unfortunately we decided to give these and the British Library so we started our trek back to King's Cross. We managed to miss the 15:00 train and had to wait until 19:30 to catch the next available train. This gave us time to visit the British Library (next door to King's Cross) after all.

The library had a wide range of interesting things, from Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica to a large collection of Beatles paraphenalia and some Tolstoy novels that I thought Pete would have enjoyed seeing. Should I ever be in a position to research something and have cause to do so at the British Library I think I would enjoy myself immensely.