I was SHOCKED at London’s Natural History Museum

My little test at London’s Natural History Museum wasn’t whether I could identify a dinosaur. It was whether I could eat lunch alone without putting on headphones. No podcast, no music, just me and a pesto pasta in an extremely busy cafe.

Nothing bad happened. My lunch was tasty, and I was ready to explore. For someone who’d found doing things alone anxious, embarrassing and a bit cringe, that counted as progress. This was the third outing in my solo-trip series, filmed in 2024, and I still began the day excited and nervous.

Getting through the door

I’d planned very little beyond getting there. First came a train into London, then the Tube to the museum. As a Canadian, I still find being able to reach so many places by public transport remarkable, even with a slightly delayed train. Without a car, there are places I can’t get to easily, but a London day trip is fairly straightforward for me.

I love visiting London for a few hours, although I wouldn’t want to live there. The people, traffic, sounds and sheer amount of everything are a lot. I’m much more of a village or small-town person.

At the museum, I’d booked a free timed ticket. On that visit, there were two queues, including a long one outside for people arriving without tickets. It had started raining, while I could show my booking and walk straight in. That was a very welcome difference before I’d even looked at an exhibit.

Lunch without something in my ears

Inside was heaving. It was the busiest museum I’d visited in the series so far, and I arrived just before lunch, already hungry. I’d fallen into a routine of eating first so I could spend the rest of the day exploring, but finding a table took some effort. I ended up taking the only available one, which hadn’t been cleared yet.

My pesto pasta had olives, cheese, tomatoes and edamame, with a Diet Coke alongside it. It was a decent-sized portion and genuinely tasty. I remembered lunch as roughly £9 when I filmed, which wasn’t wonderful value but didn’t strike me as terrible for a tourist spot in central London.

Eating on my own is something I’m trying to get better at. This time I deliberately left the headphones off and simply sat there with my lunch. I had a good time, then carried on to the galleries. A shocker, I know, but an encouraging one.

Dinosaurs are still cool at 31

I started in the Blue Zone, looking at reptiles and mammals. The mammals room was huge, with skeletons, elephants, tusks and fossils to look at. One comparison that caught my attention put an Asian elephant’s teeth beside a woolly mammoth’s. The size difference was wild, and I kept finding more in what was still only one room.

There were children everywhere. The dinosaur section was especially packed, with kids reacting to a roaring dinosaur, and as a 31-year-old woman I could admit that dinosaurs and fossils are cool. My one advantage as a short person was that I could see over some of the smaller visitors. Getting close enough to read the labels was harder.

I’d watched Jurassic Park at a formative point in my childhood and wanted to be a palaeontologist, or an archaeologist thanks to Indiana Jones. I still loved looking at fossils with so much intact. The crowds made it difficult to inspect everything, but they didn’t make the actual objects less fascinating.

The building was part of the visit

The small treasures room was busy enough that I switched from filming to taking photos. I saw an Apollo moon rock, dinosaur teeth, a meteorite and a first edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. I love space and Apollo history, so the moon rock was particularly cool to find among that collection.

Back upstairs, the architecture reminded me of what I’d imagined while reading Harry Potter as a child. I know, a bit embarrassing, but there it is. I also noticed that the ceiling’s square panels contained different plants. I’d first taken them as pretty decoration, then read that they were hand-painted. The building itself gave me plenty to stop and look at.

The gemstone displays were another favourite, partly for the variety of colours and shapes and partly because the labels said where everything came from. I saw pieces from Brazil, Mexico, Russia and many other places. I made my way to the vault at the back, only to find it closed. I hoped I hadn’t missed anything too cool.

By the gift shop I was getting tired, although apparently not too tired to fall in love with a stuffed giant squid. I wish I’d bought it. Overall, the museum was very busy and far too hot on my visit, but I had a really fun day. I was absolutely pooped, and it was time to go home.

Watch a solo day at the Natural History Museum, starting with lunch on YouTube.