Day 4: Tring

Our hotel's breakfast was amazing! (It was all free!) I ordered scrambled eggs and toast (I felt like such an American), but it was interesting because they brought it with the eggs on top of the toast and the eggs were very creamy, but it was still delicious! After breakfast, we walked to the train station and began our journey to Tring, which took about 3 hours total travel time. Upon arriving, we called cabs and headed for our hotel. Not wasting any time, we walked into town (about a mile walk) to head to a branch of the Natural History Museum. 

View of the English countryside on our walk (minus the highway....)

Natural History Museum specimens on display (they were all real!)

A water buffalo. Look at the horns! I had to post because it reminded me of the VeggieTales song about water buffaloes. 

I found Jenna Marbles' dog! 

This wall kind of looked like the walls at my cabin or in my garage. Very cool to see all of the different kinds of deer!

After exploring the museum, we didn't get a chance to eat lunch as a group. So, I grabbed some Walker's shortbread and a KitKat from the vending machine (very nutritious). Walker's is a Scottish brand of shortbread that I remember my grandpa raving about while I was growing up, so I had to try it, and it was delicious!! The KitKat was great; they have a different kind of chocolate here in the UK than we do in the US. It's delicious!

At 2 PM, we had an appointment with some of the curators of the Natural History Museum who took us behind the scenes. They showed us all of their collections that scientists from all over the world use for research, including an on-site library, egg collection (with over 5,000 species of eggs), skeleton collection, and most of all, their bird collection. Their bird collection is comprised of bird skins covering nearly 95% of all of the world's bird species. We were even shown some of Darwin's own specimens that he himself collected and studied from the Galápagos Islands!

Darwin's pigeons

Darwin's mockingbirds 

Darwin's finches. 

Some of Alfred Wallace's collected bird specimens. 

When we were done with the curators, we headed down the street to a pub for dinner, where I had the best veggie burger of my life. The pub was adorable! It was a beautiful day too; our first sunny one!