Our beloved natural history museum

By the time we get home, Silas will have made almost zero progress on writing and reading, can barely count to twenty but has enlarged his knowledge on natural history considerably.

Tomorrow morning we head off again to the Natural History Museum to meet up with one of our friends we have made here. It takes us about 30 minutes on public transport and the building is a magnificent building that sits in the corner of a large public park that contains lots of playgrounds, merry go rounds, pony rides and a bunch of immigrant men who try to entice small children and their parents to buy plastic junk. Without children, it would be a great spot to go for a run, a casual stroll, to sit in the sun and read and soak in the green space amidst the grey city. Oh that and it is situated on one of the best shopping streets in Milan, just an enticingly short stroll away.

The museum costs 3 euro to enter for the three of us (eg one adult) and you can go there all day. The exhibits are all housed in big glass fronted displays so that you don't have to spend any time at all chasing or grabbing your small children in case they are about to touch/break/destroy/dirty a priceless exhibit. And it is warm. So we go there a lot because the kids still spend most of the time literally running and pointing and jumping up and down and you can't really ever exhaust the things there are to see there. That and it is easier than trying to make Silas write S's and keep Gwilym entertained at home.

Here are some photos of the exhibits to give you an idea of what we see. There is also the insects, dinosaurs, geological exhibits (crystals etc) and a whole room of educational panels about all sorts of important topics, in Italian.

Gwilym sitting on the lovely sculptures at the entrance that have a small sign beside them saying not to play or sit on them which I noticed post photo - I swear

Silas' most favourite animal because they fight so well (as seen on Frozen Planet BBC DVD...)