32 Comments
Jul 30, 2022Liked by Christopher Elliott

Musee d'Orsay in Paris. Impressionists heaven!

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Bring back Fizzio! My favorite museum complex is the WW1 museum in Kansas City. The museum is fascinating, and there are often exhibits on social topics of the WW1 era. After you go through it, you can visit the Liberty Memorial Tower. It was dedicated in 1926, which was only eight years after the end of WW1. The tower has murals on the first floor, then you take an elevator to the top for a spectacular view of Kansas City. You feel like you could see all the way to Europe.

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Jul 31, 2022Liked by Christopher Elliott

My favorite museum in London is the Science Museum. I used to go there often as a teenager.

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Jul 31, 2022Liked by Christopher Elliott

Imperial War Museum. I'm not a fan of the redo they did a few years ago, but it is still a spectacular space.

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Jul 30, 2022Liked by Christopher Elliott

I have been to so many museums in my world travels but enjoyed the Hunterian Museum -Royal College of Surgeons in London. Have been to London so many times I have been to all of the usual ones in London plus museums in other countries I have been to

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Jul 30, 2022Liked by Christopher Elliott

Years ago I did several months of consulting in Virginia, a job that had me flying into DC every Monday and leaving every Friday. If I finished up early I was able to spend the day exploring before my late day flight, so in this way I saw all of the Smithsonian - or all that existed at the time, starting with the original "Fortress." There have been three new buildings since that I still have to see.

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Jul 30, 2022Liked by Christopher Elliott

My favorite museum is the Warsaw Uprising Museum where you can relive the Polish resistance, the civilian uprising, the Nazi's absolute obliteration of Warsaw as the Russian army sat just across the River watching and doing nothing for weeks before finally moving in to defeat the Nazis. It's an educational and engaging multi-mediaexperience,

Second favorite is the Oskar Schindler Factory Museum in Krakow. I think of it every time I step onto a Schindler elevator or escalator - or watch Schindler's List..

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Jul 30, 2022Liked by Christopher Elliott

In the early 90s I was in Malaysia and visited a museum in I think Kuching.

What amazed me was that the bird exhibits had been set up by Charles Darwin.

They looked like they hadn't been dusted since!

I also liked the OLD Egyptian Museum in Cairo for a similar reason.

Everything looked liked it was exactly the same as when it originally opened which made just being in the museum an experience itself.

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Jul 30, 2022Liked by Christopher Elliott

Edinburgh also has double-decker buses.

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Jul 30, 2022Liked by Christopher Elliott

Picking a museum for its content is a futile effort. I am picking a museum as a museum, for its layout and display effectiveness. That museum would be the Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac in Paris. The non-Western art is displayed so well that the displays themselves could be considered works of art. No longer need a museum be a bunch of glass cases and wall displays with little label cards along straight corridors. If in Paris, see it.

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My favorite museum experience probably doesn't count as a museum exactly, but wandering the ruins the isle of Delos in Greece. So was Herculaneum in Naples.

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Jul 30, 2022Liked by Christopher Elliott

I love visiting collections in museums and libraries, we see as many as we can from the tiniest to the grandest when we travel. If I thought on it I am sure others would come to mind, but the one that came to mind first was the Frick Collection in New York City. The reason I enjoyed it so much was the compact size in comparison to many other museums but every room was filled with masterworks. With quality over quantity, I spent more time appreciating each piece in what was once a grand residence. It was like doing a house tour and an art museum tour in one stop. The grand museums are wonderful too, but they are so overwhelming I see too much to take in with a single visit; I observe all but see little.

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Jul 30, 2022Liked by Christopher Elliott

Two come to mind - The National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, which has a fascinating collection of pre-history and history, with preserved bog people, Viking history, and beautiful artifacts like the Sun Chariot. You could spend a whole day there. The second is the much overlooked Fukugawa-Edo Museum in Tokyo - it's small and a little hard to find and often confused with its larger cousin, the Edo-Tokyo Museum, which is kind of like the Museum of London. But the Fukugawa-Edo museum is a gem - a recreation of a pre-modern-era village, extremely atmospheric with sunrises and sunsets and cicadas and frogs and beautiful old buildings to explore. There is never anyone there, and the staff is always wanting to explain everything to you - in Japanese of course, but it's utterly fascinating.

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Jul 30, 2022Liked by Christopher Elliott

Victoria & Albert, and the British museums

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It is extremely hard to pick a favorite, but is there any other city in the world that has a better compliment of excellent museums, many free, than London. An all time favorite is the Wallace Collection. We return often just to (re)enjoy what it offers and to have tea in the atrium.

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London's fantastic Indian restaurant: Veraswamy

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