Week 1 down. Explored the Natural History and Science museums today. Natural History was cool and I learned a lot, though nowhere near the level of the British Museum. To be fair, I don't think many things are. The dinosaur sections were pretty disappointing and clearly targeted at young kids since they lacked a whole lot of real substance. I wish they'd had more information on extinct things other than dinosaurs too, since while dinosaurs are cool they're basically just giant lizards. Couldn't we have got some info on the really weird species that look totally alien? Anyway, the extant animal sections were much better and had some pretty good info.

I also visited the Science Museum next door, which honestly didn't impress me that much. It was mostly about the history of science, and it turns out that I don't really care that much about 16th century scalpel revisions or whatever. The space race portion was decent but I didn't find much interesting outside of that. From here I walked over to Kensington Palace. I didn't pay to go in, so I can't speak for that aspect of things, but the exterior isn't nearly as impressive as I'd expected. The grounds are enormous and beautiful, though, so I don't regret swinging through. At Shane's behest I attempted to find myself a Sunday roast for dinner, but had a series of failed ventures to four or five restaurants which normally served them but for whatever reason couldn't serve me one: ran out of literally all their types of meat, were closed despite being within normal opening hours, turned out to be outrageously expensive, or had closed their kitchens weirdly early. Settled for a mayo and precooked shredded chicken sandwich with an apple (which had also been lunch a couple hours prior). Certainly not the worst thing I've eaten while on the road... Will likely get a full English breakfast tomorrow morning as a consolation prize. Can't wait until a huge dinner in Yerevan costs me like $3.

Tomorrow I think I'll do St Paul's and maybe poke around its area a little more. Tuesday I'm looking to head to Brussels; I anticipate that kicking off a series of cities that I don't spend more than a night or two in. Brussels, Bruges (train tickets from Brussels are $7 for those under 27, but weirdly $9 for those under 8), and Rotterdam/The Hague are all places I'd like to see just to get a feel for but don't anticipate being exciting enough to warrant a ton of time. Amsterdam is probably the next big destination. I'm discovering that travelling solo and as cheaply as I am makes me somewhat antsy to get a move on since my experiences in these locations are somewhat handicapped. That's not to say that they aren't valuable or enjoyable, but I feel that my attention span is undoubtedly shortened relative to what it would be otherwise.