# London, England -- Day 11

Source: https://sumnerevans.com/posts/travel/2015-baltic-cruise/2015-08-19-london-england/
Published: 2015-08-19
Travel, Baltic Cruise and Northern Europe, England, London

Today we went to the reconstruction of the Globe Theatre and then to the science
museum, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll start with the Globe Theatre.

I'll start by describing some of the things I learned about the Globe Theatre.
The area around the Globe had a long theatrical tradition even before the Globe
was built. There were theatres in the area when the original Globe was built
according to Shakespeare's design in 1599 (source of date:
[Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globe_Theatre)). The Globe burned
down a few times because of its thatch roof and wooden construction. It lay in
ruins for hundreds of years until a reconstruction was made in the late 1900s.
The reconstruction used the same materials and construction techniques as the
original and is actually the only building in London with a thatched roof.

The Globe is a circular theatre with roofs over the outside seats. The theatre
can hold 3000 people, 700 of which are packed on the floor right next to the
stage. It is open air in the middle to take advantage of the natural light
(instead of using expensive and dangerous candles).

We started by going to the museum where there were displays about the history of
the theatre. Then we went to do the guided tour. The lady doing the tour
explained some of the history of the Globe as well (some of which I described
above). Then she took us into the theatre itself.  An actress was practising her
lines with what appeared to be her voice coach. Even today the actors don’t use
any microphones, and during the daytime performances, no artificial lights are
used (the nighttime performances are lit up with artificial lights though,
however they light up the audience as well as the stage and everyone can be
seen).  The acoustics were amazing. We could hear the lady’s voice even when she
was speaking rather softly.

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We then went to the London Science Museum. It is a very overwhelming, but
interesting, museum.

We began by grabbing something to eat at the Energy Cafè. Then we went to an
exhibit about Churchill's Scientists. It was mainly about the development of
radar before and during WWII. It described the first test of radar. The
scientist who postulated the viability of radar had an RAF pilot fly over the
BBC broadcasting station and used his radar prototype to detect the plane. The
exhibit also talked about Churchill's views on the nuclear arms race. Churchill
recognized the danger of a nuclear arms race and objected to Britain becoming a
nuclear power.

We then went to an exhibit on space. There were models of rockets and engines
thereof. They had a model of the Goddard rocket, the first liquid fuel rocket
and they had one of the rocket engines from a Saturn V rocket. They also had a
full scale model of the lunar lander.

Then we went to an exhibit called *The Making of the Modern World*.  Basically
it was about the development of technology from the 1800s into the middle of the
1900s.

Next we went to an exhibit about the Information Age. There were six sections
about different aspects of Information Technology. They had a really good
explanation of Internet packet transfer, one of the best I've seen. They also
had displays about radio and television. They had some really old mainframe
computers and even an Apple 1. I really can't even begin to describe the extent
of this room, there were so many items.

The next room we went to was about flight. There were a bunch of aeroplanes from
a full scale model of the Wright Brother's Flyer to a cross section of a Boeing
747.

We then went to an exhibit on various clocks. I was so tired at this point that
I basically walked through saying "oh that's a clock, that's another clock,
done".

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Since we leave London tomorrow, we went back to the apartment a bit earlier than
normal to have some time to pack up. We head to Reykjavik, Iceland tomorrow
where we will stay for a day and a half. (Dad is staying in London for two days
and then flying to Ghana for work.)