As a small child I would always go to the library and see if there were two books in particular – The Guinness World Records and Ripley’s Believe It or Not. They meant a lot to me as a child, and I can still to this day remember reading The Guinness World Records book and seeing the two chubby guys on the bikes, it’s so funny and so crass but for Ripley’s Believe It or Not I’ve always loved the idea of oddities and strange things. We live in a very odd world and if you put it on display it adds a sense of wonder and excitement to your life. 

I love the Wellcome collection – it’s a free museum put on by the Wellcome trust. It has always been something that I’ve loved doing, wandering through museums and looking at beautiful art and oddities. That is exactly what me and Rachael were planning to do as we step into the museum. It’s a really beautiful museum with high vaulted walls and art all around you.

You can see that a lot of people just come here to hang out as there’s a café with hipster baristas and people working on their computers.

There are stairwells in beautiful modern art decor – everywhere it’s a beautiful building but I am excited to say that we were just wandering around enjoying ourselves, when over the intercom they announce that there’s a free tour just about to start. If it’s free why not do it, so we make our way to meet the gentleman that will be taking us on a tour now. As we are waiting in the front lobby of the main part of the building, some guy walked up to us and he said that he would be giving us a tour; he seemed kind of bored but the second he stepped into the main museum part he lit up with excitement and he started showing his true passion for the world around him.

He proceeded to teach us for a good 30 minutes about Charles Darwin’s cane and a shrunken head and then from there he proceeded to go in depth on the history of both. It was genuinely interesting and a lot of fun but all of our time is taken up by this gentleman talking about the world around us and we did still want to wander around, so after we’re done me and Rachael quickly start walking around trying to take in all the information again. There’s a cabinet with all the different kinds of prosthetic limbs that you can find and there was a lot of stuff involving sex, it was just a generally interesting and curious place to be.

The whole time I was there I fell in love with it because it’s a part of life that we don’t normally get to see – the more gruesome part. There was a lot of old rusted surgical gear and paintings of people dissected, the true start to healthcare as we know it. 

To anyone who wants to be amazed by their surroundings and enjoy seeing some gross and interesting stuff I highly suggest going to the Wellcome Collection, it’s good for a couple hours of entertainment and something you can say you’ve seen. It’s not every day that you’re going to see Charles Darwin’s cane. I hope you guys enjoyed this post and I’ll see you soon.