N is for...

National Maritime Museum

If you want to visit the National Maritime Museum of Great Britain, or England at least, you have two options. You can go to Greenwich (very nice place) or Falmouth (very nice place). Why we need two national maritime museums I am not sure, but I suppose being an island means there's a lot of water to cover and it's been a big part of our history. Falmouth has had big part to play in this and its nice that my home town was recognised by being given a second national musuem. There can't be many of those in the country. I last went to the Falmouth one some years ago, and although it was good, it wasn't that good. It was okay.

The one in Greenwich I went to on Saturday and it was really good. I went ostensibly to see the North-West Passage exhibition about the men who sought out this fabled route through the ice floes of the Arctic to try and improve trading routes. Now, due to global warming, the route is easily navigable. Having wandered around this section it was on to the rest of the museum, including a sit down in bunks like those on the RMS Mauretania, a play on some morse code machines, hoisting some flags, and seeing the original coat Lord Nelson was wearing when some French sniper bloody shot him. Bastard.

I haven't been to the Falmouth NMM for long enough now to pass fair comment on a direct
comparison to the Greenwich NMM but certainly if you're London based a visit to the NMM (which is free, unlike the Falmouth one) is certainly worth a couple of hours of your precious, precious time.