Museum nostalgia

The Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter has just reopened after being closed for refurbishment for the past 4 years. We visited today and I really loved it. Upstairs is the most amazing collection of taxidermy, butterflies and sea creatures, as well as all sorts of fascinating artifacts, all arranged beautifully but also managing to make you feel as though you are rummaging around in the attic of a Victorian explorer (everyone knows that's the best kind).

It made me feel ridiculously nostalgic. There was a time, mainly on our travels, when T and I were never out of museums and galleries. We'd rock up in a new place with our backpacks, find somewhere to stay and then spend the next couple of days wandering around the local museums and galleries, looking and learning . From huge slick modern operations to tiny little dusty local ones where you'd have to find someone with a key to let you in and would be the only people there. And for a few days afterwards you'd retain the information you'd read and know everything there was to know about the course of the Mississippi, the relationship between Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, historic Fijian hairstyles, or the history of paint-by-numbers. And then it would gradually slip away, leaving only the odd 'useful' fact behind (the inventor of paint-by-numbers kits always insisted on including the colour red, whatever the subject matter - fact fans!). There was a lot of beer consumed on these travels as well, which may have contributed to the patchy retention of information... I miss it (both the freedom and drinking beer in the sunshine!) but then I've found there's nothing like spending all day at home with a newborn to make you long to pack up your backpack and head off again. We will one day, I'm sure.

Anyway, back to the RAMM, I wasn't sure if photography was allowed and there was nobody around to ask, but I couldn't resist taking a few furtive pictures of the butterflies.