Last night, on a tip from a pal, Anthony and I went into Aberdeen to visit the Marishal Museum and the Zoology Museum. They were open from 7pm to midnight, with various shows and so on, and activities for the kids.
We went to the Marishal first, because they had a Mummy, and Anthony is into Egyptology in a big way. They had loads of local artefacts, from pictish stones, to stone axes and iron age axes, local pottery, an Inuit canoe, muskets and dirks from the '45, weaving spinning and milling stuff - gosh, the list goes on!
They area where the Mummy was kept was in darkness, and you were issued with torches to view everything, which (although it was aimed at the kids getting a scary thrill) was a bit annoying because I couldn't see the things in the detail I wanted. There was a Mummy of a grown woman, which was interesting; a small girl-child, which was creepy because she was Rachel's size; and a crocodile. Another interesting thing was a canopic jar that was open and on it's side so you could see the contents, which were a bit yucky.
We then went along to the Zoology Museum, with the first thing I saw being the skeleton of a sabre tooth tiger.
There was also a massive elephant - way bigger than anything I have ever seen in real life! Anthony was convinced it was a mammoth, but I don't think it was big enough for that.
There were lots of skeletons and stuffed animals. One of the interesting things they did was to present the skull of something and behind it, a stuffed or made up head of the same beast, so you could see what it looked like with it's skin on.
The staff had made up a life size model of a velociraptor skeleton, which was fully articulated and managed by a human inside it. As it was in ultra violet light, the white of the bones showed up brightly and the person inside was invisible because they were dressed in black. Unfortunately in the pix, the camera flash lit up the person. This creature was wandering around the place scaring the life out of people - lots of fun! There was also a man made up as a caveman, who gave me a wee fright!
Anthony made a lantern downstairs from a fizzy pop bottle, which he is very pleased with.
There were lots of creepy crawlies, stuffed birds and small wildlife (fox, badger and so on). There was also an underwater show. Some folk had made up models of sea creatures and painted them in fluorescent paints, so they would show up in ultra violet light, but the puppeteers couldnt be seen because of being dressed in black again. It was a really good show - very well done.
We went outside for the bat-watch. The folk had lots of bat listeners to pick up the clicking the bats make, and we saw several bats flying about. Anthony was very impressed with the stuffed fruit bat, which was enormous!
Thoroughly enjoyable evening, and we were both pretty cream-crackered when we got back home. Anthony was asleep within minutes!
