The visit to Royal Gardens Kew has been the highlight of my trip so far, I love visiting botanical gardens and feeling like I have traveled to the farthest parts of the world.  The herbarium at Kew Gardens houses around 7 million plant specimens from all over the world. Some of the locations you can visit in the 326 acre location include the tropical Palm house, the East Asian style Bamboo Gardens, and the extravagant Temperate House.  We were able to see many different categories and classes of flora, and every plant was labeled, even the trees between major locations. Since to grounds are so large, every time we went to a new location, it felt like a completely new environment. My favorite location was the temperate house because of the beautiful way the plants were organized.  It also included a small portion of almost every category of plants that we would be seeing later on the journey through. You really understand the royalty of the gardens when you visit this house.  Even though the large expanse was difficult to walk in the cold weather, We were excited to trek to as many locations possible during this visit.

The first museum we visited when we came to London was the Transportation Museum. it was a fun and interactive historical museum that displays the amazing history of London’s many forms of mass transport. At the time of our visit, there was a poster exhibition going on with many pieces of work from illustrators and students. My favorite poster of the day was called The Faceless Woman, and featured an illustration of a woman sitting at an empty train station on a clear starry night. It was my favorite poster because of the the elegant and soft style the artist was able to create. There was also a beautiful glow that came from the night sky that didn’t seem like a simple illustration, the stars were shining off the page an creating a beautiful luminosity. there was a sense of loneliness and peace that I felt looking at the work, which was emphasized by the desaturated colors and from the sky taking up about 50% of the composition. I later discovered the artist wont the bronze prize in the contest for this illustration, and I feel it was well deserved.