Wallace Collection armoury, Hamleys and Box Sized Die!

Day off today so I took Aaron up to London to see the Wallace Collection armoury. We had planned on meeting Sam for lunch en route but sadly there was massively heavy rain today which caused flooding in the Hither Green area so we were badly delayed and had to change our route. We did finally get to London though and had some lunch and then a leisurely stroll to the Wallace Collection in Marylebone.

The armoury is wonderful with a great collection of armour and weapons.

There was a nice exhibit where you could try on some of the gear which Aaron loved:

You can see all the armoury pics here:

https://plus.google.com/photos/+KTGlitz/albums/6034521873512261345

Once we'd been round the armoury a couple of times we set off to meet Sam. Saw this weirdness on the way:

As we had a little time to kill  I took us via Hamleys for some toy heaven.

Aaron loved the My Little Pony section

The Star Wars section was disappointing but a Lego clone trooper made it all better

Sam met us at Cannon Street and then we headed off to The Gherkin to see part of the Sculpture In The City 2014 collection. Box Sized Die was the name of the installation by João Onofre. A death metal band called Unfathomable Ruination were getting inside a soundproof and playing until they ran out of oxygen.

Here's Unfathomable Ruination going into the box and having it closed up:

Once the box was closed you could scarcely hear any music/noise but there were some amazing vibrations on the box itself. It was a very interesting experience feeling the performance but being able to see or hear anything.

The band had been averaging between 14 and 19 minutes in the box and today they managed 22. This was the legal safety limit and so they were released early. We were told that the band had wanted to push through this limit but sadly health and safety had to come before art. This is them as the box was opened: