Still Touring!!! 10 July Monday

Today Charlotte, Danny and I hopped the train down to Rotterdam. Our first stop was the Natural History Museum, Natuurhistorich Museum, in the museum park area. This museum is housed in an old villa, so the setting is quite unique. The first thing you notice on approach to the building is the sperm whale skeleton suspended from the ceiling. This fella was stranded out at Scheveningen, and now is big "OOOO! Cool! " here. The best part was a temporary exhibit called

The whale they found was the Leviathan,  a predatory sperm whale, the largest on record. It was discovered in the Peruvian desert along with the bones of a seal, which it had probably eaten. Its teeth were about the size of a humans lower leg! Scientists believe that its huge size may have had an effect on the size the fin whales today. When the predators were that big, the prey had to evolve bigger, almost an evolutionary "arms race" I loved the juxtaposition of the jaw of the Leviathon with the skull of the pygmy shrew-largest and smallest right next to each other. Cool. The museum also had loads of taxidermy animals, eggs,shells,rocks, all the usual suspects!

in the main exhibit space. pile of gray rocks? no, vertebrae!

pygmy shrew skull

Leviathon jaw

the natural world

giraffe and icthyasaur skeletons

this fella used to roam the Blijdorp zoo, now he educates the kids forever

carbon fossil

We then headed across museum park to the NAI, Nederland Architecture Institute, for some more fun and learning. Danny, Jerry and I visited her in January and enjoyed it. We wanted to take Charlotte to the awesome cafe and show her the exhibits. It was as nice as I remembered(and almost as cold outside!) to sink onto the couch for a cappuccino! Danny and Charlotte decided on the sweet special for lunch, Aunt Susan would be proud! We then toured the institute and it was cool to see now how much we have seen of the country. Many of the buildings and places in the displays we have been to in the past few months. There was also a temporary exhibit on Urban Planning for the future, how it is imperative, a calling, the very crux of the future of democracy...very fervent and interesting. That would be a great job of my nephew Jamie and other smart outside the box thinking young people. As always the Lego and CAD drawing stations were FUN! I love Rotterdam!