Maritime Museum and Storehouse

This blog is over a week out of date. I forgot to do it at the time, but it was a good day out, and better late than never.

First up was a walk to the Maritime Museum and a quick look at the impressive ship in a bottle at the entrance.

Once inside it was a little bit embarrassing as we were almost the first visitors of the day and were vastly outnumbered by loads of volunteers who were very keen to chat to us and tell us all about the exhibits.

It was fortunate that after a while the whole place started to fill up with children on school trips and we were left alone to browse.

There was so much more to see than we expected, but the main reason we came was to see Admiral Lord Nelson's jacket that he was wearing on board HMS Victory.

Very, very unfortunately, and after the battle was almost won he was shot by a sniper and died shortly afterwards. A volunteer pointed out the hole in the jacket where the shot hit him.

We then caught the DLR up to Stratford for another exhibition, that also had a large number of helpful and knowledgeable volunteers.

This was the new V and A Storehouse at the Olympic Park.

This incredible and enormous building houses all of the surplus items that do not fit into the actual V and A Museum. You are allowed to walk along paths to look at everything.

There is even a glass floor where you are standing right on top of a huge archway that was taken from the Taj Mahal.

The building is kept at 20 degrees and without sunlight, and we were very impressed that there was no dust anywhere.

Yet another volunteer (what would we have done without them today) who explained that they have a massive ducting system that draws dust up in to it without damaging the items.

How wonderful would it be to have one of those at home.