Museum Tour :: Riverside Museum & The Tall Ship

Glasgow is home to some of my absolute favourite museums (see: the Kelvingrove, the Hunterian) so while in town over Easter this year I made it a priority to head down to see the new Riverside Museum - offering a slice of life during different periods of Glasgow's history, a superb history of different kinds of transportation and a Victorian street (A+++).


I don't generally find cars interesting but found myself spending a good amount of time just wandering around admiring this vast array of vehicles on display across the floor and up the beautiful pale green walls (typically I captured this on black and white film, so you miss out on that part of the experience)


You can have a sit down inside old trams and buses and read the stories of the people who worked on them around the city - I came away with a real sense of Glasgow through the ages via methods of transport - if that even makes sense.


Basically every kind of transport is on display at Riverside. They have an incredible display of model boats, every kind of bicycle you can think of, old caravans, fire trucks, trams and trains. Again, not things I expected to find interesting at all but found myself mesmerised as I walked around and got utterly lost.

The Victorian St has everything - a nice Saddlers, a pretty Photography Studio, a horse-drawn hearse.


The building is purpose built and its beautiful. I was really enjoying the staircases with their clean white lines and hidden hand-rails.

Outside the Museum sits the Tall Ship, The Glenlee - a cargo ship built in the shipyards of Glasgow and now a floating museum rich in history and interactive fun (spend HOURS pulling bags of flour up and down between decks, or sleeping on the top deck, I recommend both should you have an afternoon spare).

I love poking around on old ships, I find the way they managed to get everything into such tiny spaces fascinating, the genius little drawers and folding away tables and sinks.




The Riverside Museum and Tall Ship are located beside the river Clyde - I recommend the lovely walk along the river from the Exhibition Centre if it is a nice day. Find out more on the superb Glasgow Museum's website and about the history of the Tall Ship on The Tall Ship website. I shot these on B&W film using my Yashica TL Electro X in April 2014.

Blenheim Palace

Blenheim Palace is a rather magnificent country estate in Oxfordshire, birthplace of Winston Churchill and the Place My Mother Wouldn't Shut Up About When Talking About England for my entire life.

I probably visited in the spring of 2012 for the latter reason, rather than the former - and immediately saw why this place had such a huge impact on the 9 year old mind of my dear Mummy which has never quite left her. Glorious paintings, furniture, history - everything you expect from a big old house that has been standing for as long as the Palace, and has been kept in breathtakingly perfect condition.

Rather surprisingly I haven't been to many country estates, so I don't have much to compare the Palace to in terms of grandiosity.  It certainly left an impression (when can I move in?). We spent a whole day here and I would gladly go back for seconds. Except that the year long pass I got from this visit has expired. Sigh.

Unfortunately they are quite strict about not taking photographs inside the house, which means I enjoyed looking at all of it with my eyes for a change. However the grounds are quite spectacular (more on those later) and the tiny chapel is extraordinary, with its tiny pews and huge marble sculptures.

My parents are over this summer, and I'm surprised Mum hasn't professed her desire to return here. I'll probably take her anyway, any excuse.

Blenheim Palace is in the small Oxfordshire town of Woodstock, and is easily accessed by train from London. I shot these pictures in 2012 on my Yashica TL Electro X on Ilford 400 Delta 35mm film.

Keats House

Keats House is a wonderful museum and literary centre dedicated to the memory of Romantic poet, John Keats, who lived in the house and wrote some of his most inspired poems here.  It is a nice wee spot, hidden away in leafy Hampstead, and if you like going to houses which look much like they did in the olden times to see how people lived, you will enjoy Keats House, even if you don't give a monkey's about Romantic Poetry.

Its small, but lovely. The weak winter light streaming through the big windows on the day I visited was heavenly. There is lots of infomation everywhere on the various families that have lived in the house over the years - if you are a fan of the film Bright Star (and ladies, who isn't) it cannot be missed.

I want to move in immediately. Afterwards you can go on a lovely walk around Hampstead Heath, or perhaps just walk around the streets, imagining you have enough money to live anywhere in Hampstead at all.

I visited Keats House in December 2013, visit their website to find out more.

Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture

Seattle's Burke Museum is small, but perfectly formed. A modest $10 entrance fee will give you access to a wonderful slice of local Washington natural history, a modest but delightful collection of dinosaurs and friendly staff who are more than happy to let you stroke their porcupines and give you card pangolins to colour in and keep.

I was particularly drawn to the "local" focus of the museum, which like so much of Seattle in general reminded me a lot of the museum back home in Auckland. I find a lot of the bigger Natural History Museums tend to get a bit... non specific - you could be in any museum anywhere in the world, so its always nice to be in a smaller space that focuses directly and primarily on the local area and the history of the city and part of the world that you are in. It gives the museum a different voice, a different feel, to any other museum anywhere in the world, which makes it interesting. And it feels welcoming, and like home.

They also recently found a mammoth tusk right around the corner from my hotel in South Lake Union, which probably made me more excited than it should have. I love when Museums get excited about this stuff on social networking and share it like crazy.

These photographs were all shot using my Yashica TL-Electro X using Kodak Ektar 100 film. You can see more photographs from my museum collection here.

#MuseumWeek - Museum Greatest Hits!

Its #MuseumWeek over on twitter this week - all of my favourite London museums are taking part and engaging people in conversation with behind the scenes tours, giveaways, quizzes, and other fun larks until the end of this week.

I thought I'd join in and remind you of a few of my favourite museum posts on ice floe. In no particular order...

The Natural History Museum, London - I've featured this blog many, many times over the years, probably because I find myself drawn to this place like a teenager to a member of One Direction. My favourite posts include (but are by no means limited to) - this post of taxidermy portraits, the bird hall is my happy placed - and I literally cannot go through South Kensington without popping in to visit my favourites, as you will know if you follow me on instagram, where they feature often.

The Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge - Many of you may remember that this blog started as a bit of a polar exploration fan girl blog (who doesn't love a man who hasn't changed his underwear in months and eats penguins) and I took a trip to the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge to geek out and take photographs. I swore I would go back but sadly have not had the chance to, something I plan to rectify this summer for sure. You can see the photographs from this initial trip over here.

The Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna - Probably the best Natural History Museum I have had the good fortune to visit. This place is huge, and has incredible taxidermy, including some of the most incredible but heartbreaking dioramas of New Zealand birds which are on the brink of extinction I've ever seen. I blogged my favourite pictures from my trip here, and a comprehensive instagram tour.

The Hunterian Museum, Glasgow - I still can't understand how it took me 10 years of visiting Glasgow regularly before I discovered this gem of a museum. Check it out. Also, not to be confused with the Hunterian Museum in London, which is also superb.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Everyone loves the Met, its pretty great. I spent a damp day there after being caught in a rainstorm in November last year and for some reason it was one of the most hilarious days of my life. There isn't anything I could say about this place that hasn't already been said, but you can see the pictures I took over here.

Museum national d'Histore naturelle, Paris - This place is a treasure trove if you like bones. I spent a whole morning in there with my jaw on the floor. The crumbling paint, art students sitting around in dusty corners sketching, empty corridors and vacant stairwells. Its everything I could dream of. I shot way too many photographs but my favourites are in this post, all taken from the top mezzanine level looking down on the dinosaurs. And I lost a bunch of followers on instagram while I was there.

The American Museum of Natural History - Famous for its taxidermy dioramas, I lost a day of my life in this place. Totally worth the $25 entry fee and queue to get in - I love all of the photographs I took here both in gem and taxidermy halls. You can see the greatest hits here and my instagram tour here. God remember when we all used the earlybird filter on everything? That really dates my trip.

The Victoria and Albert Museum - Thats the V&A to us Londoners, is one of my favourite places to go early on a Saturday morning when the tourists are still eating their hotel breakfasts and getting lost on the tube. If you get in right when it opens you can be the only person wandering the halls for at least a couple of hours, and it is magical. One day I rocked up and they were changing things around in some sections, and I got to take some pretty cool "behind the scenes" type photographs. I love when you catch a Museum changing its clothes. I also do this weird thing where I collect different things every time I visit the V&A, my favourite post on this was the time I collected gryphons.

The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich - This place has featured over and over again on this here blog, again its one of my favourite spots to spend time in London at the weekend. I love sitting in a quiet corner looking at the paintings of ships. Its that simple. You can see my favourite post on the subject here.

I'm currently vexed that I don't seem to have ever posted about the Natural History Museum in Zurich, which is my all time favourite, its driving me crazy.

I have, of course, posted many, many more entries from my visits to museums all over the world, which you can peruse using the museum filter.

Denver Art Museum & Clyfford Still Museum

I had a few cool hours to kill in Denver last October, and chose to do so by taking in some art and culture at the Clyfford Still and Denver Art Museums in the city's Cultural Complex.

The Still Museum was peaceful, the art and architecture beautiful.

The DAM was something else. Floors and floors of art both modern and classic, interactive areas, a beautiful collection of Native American art and artefacts.

I was completely taken by the Western Art floor. Duh - cowboys, horses, buffalo, it was all a bit like what the inside of my head looks like a lot of the time.

I also got really lost.

It was worth it.

These photographs were all taken on my Yashica TL-Electro X using Kodak Ektar 100, in October 2013.